


Vengeance as Cold as Ice

by spaceleviathan



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Avenging Angels, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The devil has broken out of his cage, hell-bent on destroying every human on the planet, and the angel Gabriel, alias "Tony Stark", is starting to think that he's the only one smart enough to realise that sending THOR, of all angels, after their wayward brother was probably a bad idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because everyone needs more Avenging Angels. 
> 
> Based on: http://brilcrist.deviantart.com/art/Avengers-avenging-angels-concept-320593875 and all Brilcrist’s other Avenging Angel stuff, which is based on the graphic: http://archangejolras.tumblr.com/post/24454223838/the-avengers-as-avenging-angels

They sent Thor first, which was a mistake.

\--

It was Gabriel who was sent second, though he was less 'sent' than 'being sensible', and had left without being told. Most of his brothers would put it past him, but he knew a bad idea when he saw one.

He had made an effort to tell Bruce before he left (which meant that he had informed someone responsible, so Michael couldn't yell at him when he found out. And he _would_ find out eventually). 

Bruce hadn't been around, admittedly, but Gabriel was a messenger. He was _The Messenger_ in fact, with two capital letters and everything. He knew how to leave a note. The fact that Bruce probably wouldn't see it because he, unlike some other angels, actually did his job, was not Gabriel's problem.

It wasn't as if Clint wouldn't see him, Gabriel considered, but then again Clint was a tricky one. One could never tell if he'd tell someone in charge or if he'd allow the problem to fester and mutilate. It tended to depend on his mood. If Clint wound up not bothering to tell anyone then that wasn't Gabriel's problem either.

However, he _did_ have a problem, largely involving those angels with a more practical, military mindset. However, that didn't make them clever. It was mainly Jophiel and Camael, but he partially blamed Michael. Michael should have said something. He wasn't stupid, after all - surely he would have seen what a thick idea it'd be to send Thor. Let him reiterate: they sent _Thor_ , for crying out loud _._

When Bruce found the message left for him, he would take the report of Gabriel's untimely departure to the other archangels when it suited him, if it suited him at all. One of the things Gabriel liked so much about Bruce was that he had a tendency to do as he pleased. He also got away with it since people were not usually inclined to aggravate the angel of death.

Personally, Gabriel was more intrigued (and not a little intimdated) by Bruce's authority over transformation. Usually, Gabriel was all for change - he had to be, as a messenger and the one who kept up with the times through the ever altering news -  but it still made him twitch to know how much power Bruce could have lurking beneath his innocent, dark-eyed guise. Not that he'd ever tell Bruce that.

He left Heaven almost as soon as he'd paid the visit to his brother's empty and largely uninhabited lodgings. He was at the gates and greeting Saint Peter for a trip to Earth not minutes later. The dead man seemed surprised at the sight of an angel leaving the eternal land so soon after another. It wasn't a common sight to see angels wander so often, even if that wanderer was the ever-restless Gabriel.

Gabriel knew where he needed to be.

He wasn't a stranger to Earth. Gabriel was an angel who liked to entertain what humans called vices: things they enjoyed but felt guilty about because they assumed it would drag them kicking and screaming all the way down into hell. Maybe it would. Freewill worked in funny ways. All Gabriel knew was that since he was still loyal to his Father it really didn't matter what he did, short of treason. The promised positions of individual humans inside the golden gates may be a tad more tentative, seeing as they had a choice to be evil if they wanted whereas Gabriel didn't. Gabriel was an _angel_ after all. Goodness came part-n'-parcel with the whole business. 

One of the first things Gabriel always noticed when he came down to Earth was the sheer rate of development. In the last hundred years alone the planet had sped forward in terms of both technology, ideologies and evolution. The first one was his favourite. Gabriel wasn't sure what it was about all this new tech, but it seemed to make the humans a bit crazier than they had ever been in the past. He felt like it was something to do with the fact they had finally found a way to connect almost everyone on the planet together; in these recent visits to Earth it was almost as if the entire world had expanded. That can't be good for them - so many minds should not be in cahoots with each other. A group's collective IQ is equal to that of its stupidest member, after all. 

Some may have thought that, as The Messenger, he would have hated his job being messed around in this way by the pitiful humans and their blasted technological advances. Truthfully, he loved it. It actually made his life a whole lot easier. He didn't even have to deliver any of the big stuff anymore as it was usually already all over the internet before he'd even had time to pack an overnight bag.

And since he'd been keeping tabs, Gabriel knew exactly where he was heading. He was standing on top of the SHIELD helicarrier, surrendering his hands in the air, surrounded by armoured agents hoisting hefty-looking guns within seconds.

He'd come straight here because SHIELD were one of the largest and most capable defences the human race had at the moment. Spies and killers the lot of them, Gabriel knew that they'd be able to keep a secret without causing a world-wide panic, because, even if the news was _apocalyptic,_ they, unlike other governments of the world, had no obligations to tell the general populous.

And that was good for Gabriel, because it _was._ The news was world-ending, in fact.

\--

Director Fury saw him in one of the interrogation rooms. Gabriel hadn't tried to break out yet due to the fact he actually had an agenda for once and needed to talk to someone important quickly. It was a one-time thing, therefore. Usually, nothing short of the hand of the Father Himself would have him pass down a challenge like a locked room. Gabriel saw it as a chance to show off.

"How did you get up here?" The one-eyed man asked straight off the bat, after having watched Gabriel fiddle with his handcuffs from the other side of the glass for the last twenty minutes. He was annoyed that Gabriel didn't seem nervous, Gabriel could tell by the heated glare Fury sent him. He was good at picking up subtle human cues like that.

"I flew here."

"With what tech?"

Gabriel perhaps would have broken the man's illusions on a normal day. Cynical humans were his favourite humans: the ones that assumed supernatural things were simply stories to scare children or soothe god-fearing wrong-doers were the ones who tended to come up with the wildest theories to explain how Gabriel did the things he did. A religious man would accept he was an angel with enough miracles and a flash of his wings. Director Fury would probably think he was a sideshow magician with dangerous criminal intentions using smoke and mirrors. Gabriel shook the handcuffs again to be annoying.

"Repulsors." He answered off the top of his head. There was not enough time in the entirety of the universe to try to convince the director he was an angel. It'd take at least slap upside the head from God's very hand. And even then... "And stabilisers to direct the flight."

With a wave of his free hand he made it so. The repulsors were implanted in his boots and the stabilisers were tucked away in his pockets. The surveillance would now show them strapped around his hands when he first arrived. From how up-to-date he was with the cutting edge of human engineering he figured his bluff sounded pretty plausible. The theory seemed solid enough, anyway. Maybe. Perhaps.

"And how did you appear out of nowhere?" The director was suspicious, and with good reason. Gabriel assumed it was rare for a SHIELD prisoner to be this forthcoming before they'd even gotten to the psychological torture part.

"Experimentation with stealth tech." He blagged. "I have a feeling you shoot unidentified objects out of the sky before you question them. I'd prefer not to lose my life on a trial run."

"You're up this high without protection?"

"Call me Icarus." Gabriel rolled his eyes and snarked, "It's just I kinda have something to tell you that couldn't wait for me to develop my very own specialised flight suit."

"I gathered." The human pressed a button. A wall flickered and an inbuilt screen replayed Gabriel's capture, along with his words. "Your name?"

"Tony Stark." Gabriel thought that was suitably sharp and snappy, along with being realistic enough to make it a problem for SHIELD to realise he wasn't a real person for at least a few minutes. They would already have started running background checks by now.

"And why haven't we heard about you, Mr. Stark? You seem like someone we'd keep a tab on."

Gabriel thought that was an insult and felt it was unfounded. Maybe it was the beard. Goatees were often used in human media for villains. Pity, he liked this look.

"I guess I'm just good at keeping my head down." Lies. He was a drama queen and he knew it, but there wasn't enough time. Gabriel could already feel the countdown ticking, and wondered how much time he had left. Or if he had any at all.

"Well, _I'm_ guessing 'Tony Stark' doesn't actually exist. That you're lying to me." Fury said, settling back in his chair and meeting Gabriel's hazel eyes solidly. "You said that you have intercepted and translated an alien transmission with a declaration of war against Earth."

Gabriel nodded. " _I'm_ guessing that you're a Libra and you’re grumpy because you missed lunch today." All true, but it didn't show on the spy's face. It wasn't like that was important information, nor something that couldn't be guessed at. It was hardly the most suspicious thing Gabriel had said or done so far.

"How did you do it?" Not guess he was a Libra, though you could tell, but that other thing.

"I'm very clever." And wasn't he just. Far too intelligent and far too old. Gabriel was a few steps away from panicking, because this was taking longer than he had intended and time didn't have the courtesy to slow down when Gabriel needed it to.

"Let's say for a minute that I believed you. When and where will this attack happen?"

Gabriel checked his Breitling unnecessarily. He liked this watch and wanted to enjoy it while he could. It had been a gift. "Anytime."

"And where?" Because apparently Fury couldn't figure it out; didn't realise the sheer enormity of this catastrophe.

So Gabriel met his eye. Said lowly, " _Everywhere_."

Then there was a crash from far, far above them. Shouts and guns and panic, and then a calmer report coming through from Fury's comm. The TV flickered again to show the CCTV in real-time. It showed a muscular blond standing close to where Gabriel had first appeared, defending himself from the SHIELD agents' attacks. Fury saw recognition in Gabriel's eye, no doubt, as he immediately ordered the onslaught to cease. As soon as the bullets stopped, so did the blond's retaliation. He stood straight as the agents hesitantly approached.

Despite having just been on the wrong side of a fight and regardless of the way he was now riddled with bullets and his clothes were torn and the blues were soaked through with red, the man still seemed utterly composed. The bastard shone like the fourth of July.

\--

Gabriel was quite proud to say that he had managed to get the director of SHIELD to come see him directly and personally, but at the same time he should have expected it from yelling, “There's an alien army on its way to destroy you all!”

It was a line he knew was either going to get him locked up in SHIELD's mental facility or interrogated by the top brass, but he had been willing to take his chances. Gabriel supposed seemingly appearing out of nowhere on top of a floating fortress hanging miles above sea-level had something to do with it being the second rather than the first. It was wise, he decided, that he hadn't screamed, 'Apocalypse! The devil has escaped! You must listen to me because I'm an archangel! I'm not crazy!'

"Who is that?" Fury now demanded to know.

"I think his name is Steve." Gabriel replied, because Michael was a usual enough name to get by, but Steve was one of those all-American names that would _really_ annoy The Soldier. "You should probably talk to him. He looks like he comes from out of town." And he really did - Gabriel probably didn't even have to prompt that one out of Fury. Michael, and a lot of the angels, had a bad habit of going with looks which the humans painted other humans to look like rather than by how actual humans were. Michael, therefore, was fit, blue-eyed, blond and disgustingly handsome. He most certainly didn't seem real.

"One of these aliens you were talking about? Any more we should expect?"

Gabriel smiled, and it was all teeth. He could see it in the mirror opposite him, and in the reflection of Fury's one eye. It was not pleasant. "You should certainly hope not."

"What aren't you telling us?"

Gabriel shrugged. "You could waste time talking to me, or you could talk to the alien." He said. It was for the better - Michael would know a lot more about this whole mess than Gabriel did. The Soldier, unlike The Messenger, paid attention in meetings.

Fury eyed him with his one good eye. He spoke to an agent named Coulson and ordered them to bring Michael - now the newly-dubbed _Steve_ \- in for severe questioning.

\--

 Steve answered all of Fury's questions in detail when asked directly.

"My brother escaped custody." He said. "He and our Father had a large fight many years ago, and we've been keeping him confined since the fall-out."

"Why does it concern us?"

Why indeed. Gabriel wanted to answer that, but he had his cover to think of. He was surprised Steve hadn't blown it yet, but his fellow archangel had hardly even glanced at him since his arrival in the cell. Gabriel had initially looked down to see whether he'd turned transparent.

"They were arguing about you. About humans. My brother was not impressed that our Father sided with your race rather than with us. None of us were, but my brother was particularly incensed."

"And you're expecting me to believe you? That an inter-galactic war is going to start because your brother had an argument with daddy?"

"As I understand it, my Father is essentially the reason that any of your wars happen." Steve said snidely, shocking Gabriel for a moment. "And perhaps calling it a war would be putting it nicely, Director.  I'd call it a massacre."

"On which side?"

Steve, annoyed by the handcuffs SHIELD had the two of them in and seeing a good opportunity to prove himself, tore open the metal with a single finger and had Fury pinned to the one-way mirror by way of a simple motion. Fury couldn't escape, and Steve hadn't even stood up. The angel smiled as politely as he could manage. "I think you can answer that for yourself."

From then on, Fury seemed more inclined to believe him.

\--

As it turned out, it was Clint who had gotten the message to Steve, not Bruce. Gabriel actually doubted that Bruce had even been home since the Industrial Revolution.

He wasn't surprised. He didn't know why he'd even bothered to leave a note; he should have just let Clint do his thing. Clint saw everything. Gabriel was quite glad, actually.

He'd expected Steve to show up at some point, but his timing now was downright impeccable. He had intended to find someone of Steve's calibre to help him anyway, and since no one but Steve was at Steve's calibre, Gabriel would have had to send a message sooner rather than later. Not soon enough for Steve to _stop_ him, mind you, but quick enough that The Soldier didn't arrive after the plan had fallen around Gabriel's ears. And here he was, so ultimately everything worked out. Gabriel just hoped Steve wasn't going to yell at him for being an idiot in front of Fury. The one-eyed human would never let him live it down.

"So, how are we going to stop it?" He asked Steve when the angel had released Fury and Fury had gotten back his breath and composure. His pride was, perhaps, a little too damaged to be saved by this point, but damned if it showed.

Steve's glare was far more cutting than the director's. It was probably because no one had stopped calling him 'Steve' since he'd gotten here. Agent Coulson had tried it out when the director relayed to him what Gabriel had told him, and since then the entirety of SHIELD had been marvelling over the hot alien called Steve despite said alien's insistence to the contrary. Fury continued to use the name simply because it overtly annoyed Steve and that was what Fury considered a result. The fact it infuriated information out of his prisoner was just an added bonus.

"'We'?" Steve asked sharply. " _We_ have sent Thor." That particular collective did not include Gabriel, since Gabriel was apparently the only one sensible enough to realise how much of an idiotic plan it was, and _they_ were the idiots who didn't see Gabriel's genius alternative.

"Oh, goodie." Gabriel sneered, and it was then that Steve finally picked up on The Messenger's anger.

"What has upset you so, brother?" And there goes his cover, though now Steve was here it wasn't, in fact, needed. It was only necessary so far as Fury would have believed his words even less if Gabriel had tried to tell the truth without someone more impressive there to confirm it.

"Brother?" Fury snapped, at the same time Gabriel said factually: "You sent Thor to destroy him."

Ignoring the human, Steve shook his head. "Thor will be capable of bringing him back into custody."

"Why Thor? He's more likely to try to kill Lucifer than to bring him in."

"Lucifer?" Fury said in the background, but the two angels had long since dismissed him.

"Thor loves his brother." Steve protested, but Steve was idealistic and loved his brothers too. It made him blind. Gabriel's own form of love was a more rational kind. Possessive, perhaps, because no one touched what was his and he'd fight to the death to protect his own, but at least he could see the flaws in his family. Most of the time in high-definition.

"Lucifer doesn't return that love any more. Lucifer will either try rip him apart or manage to slip away from his grasp. My vote is on the former. And then he'll come here."

Steve's eyes widened. His mouth formed an 'o'.

"So, that's why you came down to-" Gabriel nodded.

"I just thought that you were-" Gabriel knew what he'd been thinking.

"I mean, it's just, it's not _unlike_ you to do something like this just to irritat-"

"Yes, thank you, Steve." Gabriel snapped. He turned to Fury, urging Steve to do the same. "We're here to help you. Well, I am. Steve here is too. Others will come. People tend to follow Steve."

"My name is Michael, sir." He said, elbowing Gabriel in the stomach. He leaned over the table towards the director, holding out a hand for the human to shake. Such a strange custom. Gabriel much preferred the cultures where they bowed to each other, or the ones where they sensibly screamed upon seeing the presence of an angel. Angels were glorious, as Steve had proved upon his arrival here today, but he had also showed some of his not inconsiderable power. The humans were as afraid as they were awed. Even here, in an organisation full of murderers.

Fury took his hand, shook it once and tried to drop it. Steve wouldn't allow it. The angel looked the human straight in the eye, hand strong and unforgiving around the frailer of the two, and said with such conviction that not even Nicholas Joseph Fury could doubt him, "And I am an angel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Finally published. I’m a little nervous about this, but at the same time it’s come to the point where I really just want it finished. I’ve been working on this on and off for the last year. I’m 28,000 words in already, so most of it is written.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I’d appreciate your thoughts and comments and such!


	2. Chapter 2

This time, when Gabriel was sent away, he actually _was_ sent and didn't just take off on his own accord. Gabriel maintained that he _had_ told someone and (for the third time) it genuinely wasn't his fault Bruce hadn’t been home. However, by this point, Steve was in soldier mode and had long since learnt not to listen to Gabriel when trying to get something done.

Fury wasn't happy about it - stating that Gabriel, or 'Stark', who was quite loving his new name, Tony, and had decided to adopt it, knew too much about SHIELD and was not trustworthy enough to just allow him to fly out of there - but Steve could be very persuasive when he wanted to be and, truthfully, Fury couldn't have stopped Tony leaving even if he tried. Tony was gone in between the time Fury took to blink.

Clint met him outside the golden gates of Heaven, a bow and arrow swung over his shoulder like an over-sized cupid. It was his eyes - they saw too much, too far.

Behind him, Tony saw that the archangel had gathered the troops. Or, as it were, _troop_. The singular Natasha was not something to be scoffed at, however, what with the ability to ground an angel with only her ankles. She would prove to be a valuable ally in the fight that was to come, along with being nothing short of a pain in Lucifer's skinny backside. Lucifer, all those years ago when he had started to fall, had expected Natasha to join him - she was equally as keen to bow down to the humans as he had been. Truthfully, she almost had taken his side. The angels who remained in heaven after _The Incident_ were more than thankful that she had changed her mind. Casualties would have been much higher had she decided that she didn't like their father's young creations enough to fight for them.

"No one else?" Tony asked regardless whilst Clint jeered.

"I didn't ask around. Our brothers are as likely to panic as the humans are." His eyes seemed a little distant. "I knew about it, Natasha comes to know everything eventually and Bruce is going to find out soon enough. He probably already knows. Neither Lucifer nor Thor have been kind upon the land the bastard clawed his way out of."

"Bruce won’t be impressed.” Natasha said, which was one way to put it. Tony would personally say something closer to 'borderline homicidal'. Bruce didn't like unnecessary killing - it made his job that much harder.

"Steve wants us to be ready." He said.

Clint gripped his bow a bit tighter, and whilst Natasha didn't _seem_ to be armed, in Tony’s experience that meant precisely the opposite.

"We're ready." She nodded, and that was that.

They were at SHIELD again in a heartbeat, but there were no threatening guns pointed their way this time. An agent stood by, and Tony recognised his authoritative but calm voice as Agent Coulson, the one that Fury relied on so heavily. Steve was at attention next to him. Coulson kept on sneaking him subtle glances.

"Fury wants you and all your…" The agent glanced at the two angels flanking Tony's sides. " _Backup_ to meet him in the briefing room. SHIELD needs as much information on Lucifer as we can get, wlong with whatever you know about the one who's trailing him."

Steve glanced at Tony, then to Natasha and Clint, before nodding solidly. He trusted that they could defeat the devil. Tony could see the certainty in his eye. That made one of them, then.

They followed the agent through the corridors of the, admittedly impressive, floating base homing SHIELD’s main operations. There were armed men who walked behind them, clustering them together, keeping a watch on them. Steve seemed to fit in here, all solider eyes and strict posture and grand sense of worth and capability, whereas Tony felt like a prisoner all over again. It hadn't bothered him the first time he'd been led through the winding hallways, because back then he _actually_ had been a prisoner. Yet now that he was overtly trying to help, he was still being guarded. Some show of respect.

Clint and Natasha looked a little jumpy as well, and that was never a good thing. No one wanted two twitchy angels trapped on board who were armed to the teeth with arrows and knives that were capable of killing even the feistiest of demons.

SHIELD's briefing room was all but a table held on a mezzanine above the main control room. The great span of the main SHIELD hub was lit by the wall of windows on one end, illuminating the span of the entire work centre. Tony studied the design. Gaped at it, just a little. It was really quite an impressive build for humanity. The angels expected this sort of thing from the more advanced races - the Asgardians, or the light elves - but humanity was still relatively young. They were coming along nicely, however. This scary piece of technology was proof of that.

Steve seemed to be ignoring the contraption he was hovering over the vast ocean in. He'd never been the best with technology. When Tony had initially shown him his wing, his older brother had blanched. Probably due to reasons other than just Tony deciding to use human technology to fix his little problem, but that didn't prove anything.

Clint was pacing around the table, but had his eyes and ears on everything. He'd disappear at a moment's notice as soon as he'd found some cranny to hide in that allowed him visual access to every part of the room if Steve and Natasha didn't keep their eyes on him.

Natasha was monitoring the expanse of the floor like Clint, only she was frozen in place. She was poised as always, ready to strike, and not at all comfortable surrounded by humans with more guns than they had senses.

Tony, having been through SHIELD-grade interrogation already, sat himself down on the table opposite where Nick Fury was waiting. He shot the one-eyed man a grin.

"You miss me?" He asked, ignoring Coulson when he tried to hand out folders for them all. Steve took Tony's and slid it along, because everyone who knew Tony was well aware of his little pet peeve: _I don’t think things being handed to me._ It was probably a control issue, or something to do with being The Messenger. He gave things, not vice versa. Anyone with anything to give _him_ was probably bad news, and the message doubly so.

The last time he'd willingly took something someone handed him had been thousands of years ago: an unsealed scroll from his beautiful big brother Lucifer, who had smiled at Tony so benevolently and spoke so softly, as he always had done. The scroll had not been addressed to their Father, as their Father already knew what it contained. The scroll was not just addressed to the archangels, either, but to all the angels who would listen. Lucifer's declaration of war.

"Who are _they_?" Fury asked, eyes lingering on Natasha more than on Clint. An unusual reaction. Most were more wary of the twitchy bowman than the seemingly composed red-head. Then again, Fury was the spy of spies, and Natasha's job description was essentially the same as his. She was eying him with the exact amount of wariness he fixed on her. Perhaps it was one of those ' _takes one to know one_ ' things .

"Natasha and Clint." Tony said.

"I'm Raziel." She introduced instead, voice ringing over Tony's as she sat down and opened a file. "The Keeper of Secrets. But Natasha is fine."

"And you're here because?"

"Because I know how to stop Lucifer."

Fury's weren't the only set of eyes which turned to study her suddenly. The only one who didn't seem surprised was Clint, but then Clint was likely the singular creature in all of creation who fully and completely understood and accepted Natasha, no matter how many weapons she kept strapped to her inner thigh. He had likely known about this as soon as she had.

"Why didn't you say?" Steve asked. "There was a meeting between the council earlier to discuss exactly that!"

"You didn't ask." Natasha said sweetly, almost as if to remind them all how close she'd been to joining the wrong side of the war. "You know I'm always available to answer questions for the council, Steve."

Tony couldn’t repress his smirk; hardly even tried to.

"How do we stop him?" Fury demanded, mind on more immediate matters, as humans were prone to do. They were so brief, their lives so fleeting, that sometimes it seemed as if they didn't get a chance to enjoy it.

"She can't say." Clint interrupted, glaring at Fury who was glaring at Natasha. "She's the _Keeper_ , not the tattle-tale. She doesn't kiss and tell."

Steve sighed dramatically, as if this was news to him. He always tried to get Natasha to cave with his super-charged puppy-dog eyes, but it never worked. He should really know that by now.

"And you're Clint, right?" Fury snapped.

"Real name is Uriel, but don't call me that." The archer had sat close on Natasha's left, his bow afore him in a threatening manner. "I'm just here to beat Luci's ass back into the hell-hole he slithered out of."

"And what do you do?" Fury asked. "I've heard from Steve," (Steve made a protesting noise) "That he's a soldier, and Stark here is a glorified mail-man."

"I am the Eyes of God. My job is to see and to hear. Speaking of, I love the new name, Mikey. Steve suits you." Maybe Natasha nudged her scary heels into his leg, because he made a pained noise and glared at her. Not that anyone would be able to prove anything.

"Look," Fury called to them as a group, displaying scans of what was contained in the files they'd been given on a large screen hovering above the table. There wasn't a lot of information. "We've got what we've managed to piece together from Steve here about Lucifer's capabilities. I assume your personal knowledge is significantly more extensive, but we need to pool together all our intel so we can speculate when and where he's going to show up." He looked expectantly at Clint who was inspecting an arrowhead instead of paying any attention to the general. Clint just shrugged.

"Lucifer is powerful." He said, sounding solemn. It was a tone which none of them were used to hearing when coming from Clint's mouth. Clint was much more orientated towards snark, jokes and, increasingly, human slang, than any level of seriousness. "He can completely wipe himself out of any all-seer's eyesight. I've already consulted with others like me who can see beyond the worlds, and I've raised alert to the highest in all the realms, but there hasn't been any sign of him."

Wow. Someone had been busy since Tony had been gone. He sometimes forgot how reliable the archer could be. However, he never forgot the fact the archer also dropped down from high places just to scare the feathers off everybody's wings. Tony wasn't the only one blinded by the seer's childish immaturity covering up the fact he was one of the most powerful of them all.

Then again, this was the apocalypse. Now was not the time for juvenile irresponsibility. Clint knew that as well as any one of them. More so, perhaps, as the last time he'd been fighting a battle on this magnitude he'd almost been forced to shoot an arrow in his best friend's eye.

"What of Thor?" Steve asked, and Clint shook his head.

"I think he's close on Lucifer's tail, because we can't find him either. Lucifer would cover him up as well, so not to reveal his location through Thor's tracking."

"Why is it that _he_ can track Lucifer?" Fury asked, rightly guessing that no one else could. And that was the reason they had to tell Fury - no one else in the entirety of creation bar the Father could track Lucifer, except Thor. He was also one of the only ones strong enough to likely come out of fight with Lucifer at all. So, it made sense _why_ the council had sent Thor, though it didn't make the decision any less idiotic.

"So, basically we have nothing." Fury concluded in a huff, looking despairingly to Agent Coulson - who was lingering near Steve and still sneaking looks which made Tony share a smirk with Clint - and then to another agent who was standing steadily by Fury's shoulder. She was a woman with short, dark hair. Tony had seen her briefly earlier and knew her to be Fury's right-hand woman, Agent Hill.

It was in that moment, just after Fury stood moodily and made a motion to storm away from the gathering of angels at his table, that at least seven alarms started blaring across the work-floor.

"What's happening?" He asked, striding to the command centre to pull up information being sent to his computer screens.

"Something's happened in Niger." One man said urgently.

"Where in Niger?" Fury barked, and the man shook his head desperately.

"Everywhere populated. The readings are jumbled. Everyone’s gone… they just seem to have gone mad."

"The Democratic Republic of Congo are in uproar as well, sir. It looks as if the people are destroying each other."

"Is this him?" Fury rounded on the angels who had stood when the alarms had started to scream and were watching Fury's computer screens with varying amount of horror in their expressions. Natasha hid it the best, with not a twitch to her slightly drawn face. Clint seemed angry, eyes looking just a little too far away, the past on the verge of repeating itself, and Steve had gone into soldier mode, though his expression couldn't hide the emotions warring for dominance on his face. Tony himself had no idea what face he was wearing, but he suddenly felt like he was capable of ripping Lucifer limb from limb without hesitation.

"Nothing is stopping them. Some people are trying to flee, but even the authorities have broken down."

They were such vulnerable countries. One hardly developed, one still trying to get themselves out of a war, and Lucifer had gone through them on the wind to plant the chaos and destruction he so revered into the hearts of every man, woman and child. Only the truly good could escape Lucifer's influence. If anyone tried to flee, they'd simply take the madness with them. It'd spread. Lucifer didn't need plagues of locust or rivers of blood to destroy the world when he had the human mind to utilise. The greatest weapon of all. The easiest for him to manipulate. No one was really truly good, not even angels.

Lucifer had already destroyed two countries, and their positioning made it easy to spread to the continent. He was targeting large exposed countries which were strategically placed so to hurt as much of the world as he could with minimal effort. The effect was already devastating. In but a few hours, the entire continent might be rife with anarchy. Millions of people were going to die.

Clint suddenly cried out, staggering backwards as if struck. Natasha tried to catch his arm, but was dragged down when Clint fell to the floor. His eyes looked distant. He was looking too far away to answer any of her urgent calls.

Suddenly the alarms stopped. Fury ceased shouting orders about getting in contact with world leaders and evacuations, and the silence rang as everyone stared at the screens, trying to figure out why it was all so still.

"What does that mean?" The one-eyed human asked the closest agent to him. However, it was Coulson, who had commandeered a computer off of a particularly distressed looking man, who answered.

"It's over, sir."

"What?" Tony's voice overrode whatever Fury was about to say. "No, that can't-" He looked to Fury's monitors and flickered over the information. He paled. Slowly, he turned to look at Steve.

"Tony? What is it?"

A crash startled everyone and a hundred horrified, jumpy people turned very quickly to point weapons at whatever had just appeared where Fury's table used to be. It lay shattered where it had once stood, splinted into a hundred pieces, and a man with skin of a darker hue who was clad in tattered clothes looked up, pained.

Bruce glanced first to Tony, his best friend and one of his closest companions, as if finding a home-base in such a strange and dangerous place. Not one gun wavered in any of the humans' hands even while Clint and Natasha lowered their weapons. Bruce's gaze eventually landed on Steve, who went to offer a hand.

"Who is he?" Fury demanded, his palms laden with a pistol which had appeared out of seemingly nowhere.

"One of us." Steve answered, hoisting his brother up. Tony had rushed over to help, slinging an arm around his shoulder to help him stand. Bruce was shaking.

"He killed them." He said, clinging tightly to Steve. "He killed them, Michael. They're all dead."

The monitors had proven themselves to be just that bit quicker than Bruce. They had already told Tony that much, though not in those specific terms. Instead of a death count, they just monitored the silence. The lack of movement. The fact there was not one heart-beat left in either country.

Technically, that could have meant anything.

It didn't, of course, but it could have.

\---

"I'm just saying it's strange." Tony protested, ignoring Steve's dirty look. "What? I'm not defending him, but it's not _like_ him."

They were sitting in whatever chairs hadn't been destroyed by Bruce's abrupt and panicked entry. He'd landed somewhere he hadn't been able to see whilst in a hurry - of course he'd made a bit of a mess. Likely he'd also been a tad angry before he'd shown up, and that never turned out well for anything the immediate vicinity. Fury should count himself lucky that it'd only been a table that Bruce had turned into firewood.

Bruce himself was sitting next to Tony, twitching like no tomorrow, trying to keep himself calm. Tony appreciated the effort his friend was going to. He also appreciated the fact Bruce was still here and not out on a holy mission to seek vengeance. The last time that had happened almost half of Europe's population was lost to his fury. The time before it had been Egypt and its first-borns.

"I mean, why kill them?"

"Because he hates humans." Clint snapped, sitting with his head between his legs and breathing deeply. Shock. He'd just seen millions of people die at once. He was also furious. There wasn't a sign of the angel who'd laughed over the archangel Michael being renamed 'Steve' by the silly humans now. Only the righteous fury of an angel, the burning wrath of God.

"But I had it figured out." Tony said, a little bit hysterically. "He was going to let it spread. A pandemic no one could stop. A few strategic spots and _bam!_ There'd be no more humans by teatime."

Natasha was nodding, because she'd thought of the same thing. It was an obvious thing to do, once he'd made his move. And maybe that was why he'd suddenly changed tactics, because Lucifer had never been one for the apparent. He was a trickster - someone far more sly and subtle than to settle with simply wiping the humans out.

Come to think of it, it was also a relatively swift end to humanity. There was hardly any torture elements to it at all.

Lucifer didn't like humans. 'Hate' would be far too mild a word for it. Abhorrence, revulsion, detestation. English wasn't a language which could quite match the sheer depth of feeling Lucifer possessed towards the creatures which had come to dominate the planet. No human language could.

He looked at Natasha sadly. Natasha sighed. She understood Lucifer well. Almost as well, one could say, as Tony. Neither he nor she had fallen - yet - but they'd both had their moments when they were so close to it that even now they couldn't rightly say how they were still blessed with holy light. Tony especially had one or two experiences which had almost had him rethinking which side he should have been on in the war. Almost. A few humans had died for it, but largely he'd managed to drag himself away with much the same attitude as before. He'd come out better, even. Not that he'd let anyone see that.

"He wants them to suffer." She spoke. "He wants _us_ to suffer."

"Well, mission fucking accomplished." Clint growled, still cradling his head, still trying to blink images out of his eyes. He'd seen people die before, obviously. He'd seen the demise of _everyone_ who had ever died. He would come to see the death of everyone who would ever die. He'd see Fury die. He'd see Coulson die. He'd see Hill die. He'd see every agent who sat here working die. At this rate, it would be sooner rather than later.

But, he had never seen people just _die_. They'd been ripping each other to shreds, Clint informed them with his voice thick in his throat, until, all at once, nothing. Worse was that, for about half a minute, Lucifer had left the ones with fatal, weeping wounds writhing in agony, bleeding out, trying to scream, surrounded by the abruptly deceased. He'd left them to thrash in blood and torture just long enough for them to scream, before executing them too.

Bruce slumped against Tony's shoulder. He was muttering something to himself, something about how he should be there, how he had to do his job, and then he was trying to push himself away, but Steve and Tony gripped Bruce's wrists.

"You're okay." Tony said, sitting him back down and keeping a tight hold on his friend. "We'll sort this out."

"You better." Fury growled. "Because if I get my hands on him-"

Tony wanted to laugh at him all of a sudden. He knew, however, that Fury wouldn't take that well. Nor would he allow any corrections about who he thought would come out the victor in that particular brawl. To put it into some sort of crude perspective, Clint could have five arrows in Fury's remaining eye in average blinking time. Lucifer could have Clint's throat in his hand before Clint had even reached for his quiver.

It wasn't the first time Tony had thought it, and it wasn't going to be the last: _They were going to die._

He wanted to hide himself far away, divorce himself from this situation, but he was the one who had brought it to the humans' attention in the first place. He was the one who had orchestrated this whole crazy situation. He was the reason they were all sitting here now, trying to brainstorm together their ideas and not just sitting idly by waiting for Thor and Lucifer to destroy each other.

Bruce was still shivering under his palm, when suddenly there was Tony's answer.

"Thor." He spoke. "Thor's tracking Lucifer."

"But we can't find Thor." Steve said slowly, as if Tony needed the reminder.

"But they're destructive. They're both going to be about making a lot of mess. Thor has been told to stop Lucifer no matter what."

"Thor isn't going to kill people." Natasha could see where he was going with this through the way he was glancing at Bruce and the way Bruce suddenly seemed to be outside of his body. It was an effect similar to the way Clint appeared when he was looking out into the entirety of the universe. Something about him was looser, colder, more fragile.

"Lucifer isn't going to hold the same courtesy, though." Clint inserted, and Tony nodded when Steve looked to him for confirmation.

"You know that. Can we trace him through the death toll?" Likely he wasn't on Earth - they'd just seen what had happened whenever he did hit the planet - and he was probably realm-hopping. His grudge may only be directed towards humans, but Lucifer wasn't exactly known for his morals. Anyone who got in his way would be cut down, and Thor would be hard-pressed to stop him.

Bruce shook his head, clearing his vision from where he'd been focusing outwards where he could feel the end of anyone and anything who died. Slowly, in response to Tony's question, he nodded.


	3. Chapter 3

They'd split into groups. Steve and Bruce were off to track Lucifer's trail of dead bodies, whereas Natasha, Clint and Tony were left at SHIELD to talk tactics with the humans. Natasha and Clint were now flitting around the world, focusing on large, central-continental countries with lots of people to kill in them, focusing mainly on China. The United States were already more than competently covered by SHIELD, who were scanning over it now for _any_ sign of suspicious activity (they were not going to rule out more understated gestures just because Lucifer had started with something melodramatic). So far, neither group had found anything.

Tony was pacing behind Fury, trying to get into his brother's mindset.

The Messenger wasn't known for any extreme amounts of introspection, so he had no idea why he'd been left behind, and he didn't believe the 'you're the cleverest of us all' thing that Steve had spewed out before he'd disappeared with a brisk sweeping of feathers. Likely the solider had just been trying to keep him somewhere relatively safe whilst he had no one to back him up. And against Lucifer you definitely need backup, unless your name is Thor and you're burdened with glorious holy thunder. That tended to help your chances.

Thor was big. 'Big' was another of those human words which didn't quite encompass what the angel truly was. He was built very much like Steve, only larger. His waist wasn't quite so dainty, and his biceps could kill a man. He was also sturdy. 'Sturdy' was better. 'Sturdy' was a word which spoke volumes.

Thor wasn't one to fall when Lucifer waved a hand. If Lucifer waved a hand at Tony, Tony would be on his knees, weak with pain. Lucifer had already demonstrated what would happen if he waved a hand at a human. Niger would happen. The Democratic Republic of Congo would happen. But if it was aimed at Thor, nothing. A twitch, perhaps, but just something more to fuel his anger. Moral and worthy Thor may be, but his grasp on tranquillity needed some work. If Lucifer ended up killing people then Thor would stop him. By whatever means necessary, if he had to. He wouldn't like it – Thor loved his brother deeply and truly, even after the war – but he would do it. Thor was like that. It was an attitude which he shared with Steve, and one which made never failed to make Tony feel inexplicably guilty.

Reports were slowly coming back from Natasha and Clint through a comm-link Fury had them strung them up to. That was now on Tony's list of top ten most ridiculous things the humans have tried to do, _ever_ , along with predict doomsday and try to impose their individual religions on other people. Well, that last one wasn't perhaps as funny to the humans, but from an angel's point of view it was pretty hilarious that the evolved monkeys thought that for some reason it mattered.

But wiring an angel up was just brilliant. The thought of trying to control such an unearthly creature by human means was perhaps typical of the apes, like – what was the term? – trying to catch a hurricane in a butterfly net. Tony had laughed out loud when his fellow angels had outright stared, puzzled about what they were supposed to do with the earpieces.

Clint's had almost fritz out when he'd initially taken flight. It had stabilised when they'd arrived a second later in China, but the technology hadn't liked it. Natasha's had shut down completely and it was only though (Tony’s) divine miracle that Clint's survived. He had nothing to report however, besides the fact he'd startled a few birds when he'd shown up perched in their nest. Natasha herself had aimed for the top of a building. Nothing was out of the ordinary as far as she could tell. They started moving through Asia then, looking to India next, before going to South America. When they found nothing there either, they headed towards Europe. They were in Turkey at the moment, moving slowly towards England.

Tony was using more traditional means to keep in contact with Steve and Bruce – something more traditional for him, anyway. He was all up for trying to get Bruce to wear an earpiece, but the man would likely destroy it as soon as his blood-pressure got a little high, so all it would be was a waste of time and resources.

Steve would just say no. He was no fun.

So Tony flickered to and fro, doing his job in much the same way Bruce and Clint were able to. Clint could look outside of himself see everything, but to know something in particular he had to notice; had to focus. Otherwise, whatever it was would turn into background noise and he'd miss it. There was only so much one individual could take, after all, angel or no. Likewise, Bruce knew when something died, but since plants and animals were dying constantly he had to drown it out so he could focus on when more sentient creatures departed the world. He was there to guide them when they did. He had to be. Plants weren't aware, and animals hardly noticed dying, but creatures with self-awareness like humans or elves or dwarves or giants, they needed someone to tell them what to do. Someone like Bruce.

Tony was the Messenger. He knew almost everything in the world, because almost everything in the world was being told to other people through messages, be they on the internet, through a text, or simply by word of mouth. And he had to drown them out so he knew when important messages were being sent through. An easy way to do that was know where the important messages were coming from and cut off any and all lines that were irrelevant.

So now, whilst he waited for news on Lucifer, he disconnected almost everything else and focused exclusively on Steve, Bruce, Natasha, Clint and Thor. He even kept a line open for Lucifer as well, in case the fallen angel decided he needed someone to talk to. Tony was (reluctantly) willing to be that someone, though he was also willing Lucifer not to do anything of the sort. The ex-archangel had a talent with his tongue and a tendency to twist people around until they didn't even recognise themselves. Natasha had been the only one who had managed to get away from his direct influences, largely thanks to Clint’s pig-headedness, though her own talents at manipulation had certainly helped.

Whenever Steve wanted to report something, he'd send a prayer to Tony. Tony would then go to Steve and listen to his update. _They're not here. They're travelling too fast. We're falling behind_. And Bruce kept on stopping to do his job, not that they could blame him or in fact try to restrain him, and on top of that Lucifer seemed to be killing less and less people as he went along. A mixed blessing: On the one hand, he's not killing people, but on the other the fact he wasn't was making it harder and harder to distinguish between Lucifer's own unique calling card and the natural death rates of a population. _We're losing him_.

They needed Thor.

Thor was the only one who was capable of tracking Lucifer, because Thor, wisely, hadn't blindly trusted the cage that their Father had put Lucifer into lockdown in. He'd studied, instead, anything which could help him trace Lucifer and, as a devoted brother, he had already known more about Lucifer than many of their siblings.

Somehow, he'd figured out how to track Lucifer's very grace - something which the council had scoffed at, saying Lucifer had no grace left to track at all. He _fell_. Even if there was some, it'd be too weak to feel. Don't be an idiot, Thor.

Perhaps Thor was more sensitive, or perhaps it was something to do with the sheer amount of power of God he was designed to wield, but he could follow it. And now, he was proving it.

Lucifer had no doubt figured that out. Another good reason why he was keeping Thor's attention on him rather than let him loose, as well as keeping him cloaked and untraceable himself. The Devil couldn't have Thor stop in his chase to go collect back-up, and nor could he have himself found due to a fool's mistake.

Tony sat down again. He waited for an update. He ignored the stares the humans were periodically sending him, sinking into himself. It was what he had been told to do by Steve, after all: ponder. What would he do if he were Lucifer?

First of all, how did Lucifer feel? Well, that was easy enough to imagine. When Lucifer started the war it was because he was upset and angry. Because he'd spent too long away from home, because his feelings had distorted the truth. He'd blown everything out of proportion and tens of thousands of their kind had died for it. He was furious, slighted, and felt like the world had turned on him. And then he'd been cast down.

From then on, Tony couldn't be sure what Lucifer had actually felt, but if it had been Tony who had been thrown away like so much trash, he would have been beyond rationality. More than irrational. He would have been raging in the cell he was locked in, terrified, hopeless, betrayed. He knew that better than most. Pounding the walls, he would have done everything he could to get out. And when he found he couldn't, at least not yet, he would have planned.

Tony knew instinctively that all Lucifer had been doing since he was trapped in the cage was plan. His revenge was all he had to cling onto. Tony knew his brother well enough to be aware that Lucifer was wily, intelligent and patient. Most of all, he was subtle. For all anyone knew, Lucifer's plan was already unstoppable and now he was just wasting time. Such a thought made Tony feel very cold.

But he couldn't know for sure. There were too many variables. Too much noise. He couldn't figure it out when Lucifer could literally do _anything_. Humans were so breakable, and Lucifer was so impossibly strong.

\---

When Tony glanced up after a long while of silence on all ends, Fury was looking at him. Glaring at him, actually. It didn't faze Tony anymore, which was a testament to how much the director had sent him the evil eye over the last few hours. Who'd thought it'd be a good idea to leave Fury with Tony of all angels? Oh, right, Steve. Mr Let's-Send-Thor-Heedlessly-After-The-Devil, Steve.

"I don't know why I was the one who was left behind, either." Tony shrugged when Fury didn't appear about to say anything in lieu of glowering. "Guess Steve didn't want to break the beautiful new-found connection you and I have going."

"He said you think like Lucifer." It wasn't a question, not really. Actually, it was almost a plea. A plea for what, exactly? A plea for Tony to indeed think like Lucifer, or a plea for there not to be an angel free to move around who had the same thought pattern as the devil? If it was the former, it was a way to anticipate Lucifer's movements. If it was the latter, it was a security risk.

Tony shrugged. "I thought he was going to do something and was proven wrong earlier. I may be able to assume what he could likely do, but no more than Natasha can, or Clint can, or you can. He's going to destroy everything and everyone. That much anyone can tell you."

"Then why isn't he here yet?" Fury asked, because that was a sensible question which called to light something that hadn't been fully considered yet.

"Because he's trying to shake Thor off." Was the best answer Tony could give him at a guess. "Probably. Or he just wants to fuck everyone else off as well. Go on a realm tour. He could start Ragnarök whilst he's in Asgard, set fire to Jötunheimr, turn off the sun. You just never know."

"Can he do that?"

"Yeah, it's really easy. See, all you have to do is put a bit of firewood down-"

"The sun, Stark." Fury snapped, and of course he'd be more worried about that and not about the other millions of people who could perish just as easily at Lucifer's hand just a few worlds over.

"Yeah, but he won't. I wouldn't worry about that."

Fury didn't believe him. It was in the understated way he tensed, along with the way he smashed his palm down on one of his computer screens and yelled, "Damn it, Stark, there are lives at stake here!"

"No, really." Tony half attempted to reassure him. "It's why I thought he'd let the chaos spread, because people were destroying themselves and their cities. He doesn't like man or man-made things, but the Earth is not man-made. He thinks humanity is a plague on this world, and he won't switch off the sun and kill all the plants and animals on the entire planet just to get back at you for stealing papa's love away."

"Is this _seriously_ about that?"

"Did you think we were joking? Haven't you read the Bible?" Fury raised an eyebrow at him. "Paradise Lost? That was pretty good. Got Luci down pat."

"He is really going to kill us all because he fell out with your daddy?"

" _Your_ daddy too. You should remember that. You're the problem, actually, at least from an angelic point of view."

"How is this our fault?" Fury demanded.

"Steve told you earlier: Lucifer argued with our Father about you and it got out of hand. I mean, I argue with the man but never to that degree. Whilst my Father and I aren't exactly best buddies, my relationship with him is a little less explosive than the one he shared with my brother. Which is actually quite impressive on Lucifer’s part."

Fury raised his eyebrows, and Tony realised belatedly that he hadn't as of yet answered his question directly. He wondered whether Fury needed it spelling out for him slowly on a chalk board.

He stated bluntly: "If you hadn't of been there, nothing would have happened. My brother wouldn't have fallen."

"So you do blame us." The spy didn't overtly appear as if he could ever be surprised at anything, even when an archangel tells him that he'd sooner blame the fall of Lucifer on humanity than on the psychotic bastard that just murdered two entire countries in cold blood. _He didn't mean it. He's just misunderstood._ "Then why the hell are you fighting on our side?"

Tony leaned back, stretched. Smiled, just a little.

It was a pertinent question. Something Tony hadn't thought too hard on before. He hadn't dared. Because sometimes he thought back to a cave and a few highly unpleasant human faces, and he forgot why he'd ever fought on their side at all. But then he'd recall other, kinder features on different, extraordinary mortals, and with them in mind Tony found it a question easy to answer.

"I like humans. Blaming you all is irrational, I know that, and besides, you guys are born with freewill which I think is punishment enough."

"So you like to watch us suffer?" Fury translated. Tony's smile didn't falter. He wondered if he'd creeped the director out yet.

"Can't I just like you?"

"No, you can't. You said it yourself - we're the reason your brother went loco." Fury was aggravated, tense, flexing his fists like he wanted to punch Tony around the jaw. Tony would have liked to see that. He'd also like to see Fury's hand x-rays afterwards. Actually, he'd have liked to frame them.

"Tell me what he's most likely to do. I want to be prepared." Fury then stated, refraining from referring to Lucifer by name and derailing Tony's increasingly décor-related thoughts. Tony had been considering where he'd hang his newly gilded pictures, before talks of you-know-who invaded his home design fantasy.

"He's not Voldemort." Tony chided. "It's not bad luck to call him by name. He won't even appear if you say his name three times in the mirror. Observe: Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer."

The human looked like he was trying to keep himself calm - a picture-perfect imitation of Bruce's attempts at quiet meditation all but few hours earlier. It didn't seem to be working as well for Fury.

Tony thought about what Fury was asking of him. It was essentially the same as what Steve had said: _Put yourself in his shoes. Now, what is your plan?_

"Something big and dramatic and ironic, I imagine." He eventually answered slowly, eyes closed and arms spread wide in illustration. "I'm picturing something watery, like a tsunami. The new and improved Luci's Ark. He likes animals, did you know that? It's quite sweet, really."

Fury looked disgusted, probably a hair's breadth away from rattling off one fact or another about how various evil-doers in the history of forever had always had their soft side. Maybe something about Hitler being a vegetarian painter. Tony cut him off mid-breath.

"I don't _know_." He stressed. "I don't. I'm clever, don't get me wrong, but I'm not a psychic. You've got advanced humans for that, haven't you?"

Tony knew they did. People like Irene Adler were super-humans, commonly referred to as mutants. They were also just a little more than talented – suspiciously so. The angels weren't happy about the sudden advancement of the humans and their genetics. It wasn't like they had a calendar marking the exact due-date of every notable change in human history hanging up in the communal kitchen back at the divine office, but as far as most angels were concerned the sudden introduction of mutants seemed to be a little too quick too soon.

Fury looked considering before Hill reminded him that Irene Adler was off-limits at this time. It was something to do with her girlfriend, who was another very _talented_ individual, with a unique résumé and a talent for terrorism.

"We're stuck with you." Fury growled, ignoring Tony's shrug.

"Please, don't hesitate to tell me if I'm unwelcome."

"You're unwelcome."

"I'm sorry. I'll go if you'd like to fend for yourselves against the devil." He didn't make any gestures to suggest movement, though. He wasn't about to risk Steve's wrath by disobeying a direct order and leaving the humans on their own. That, and he didn't want to be found alone when his far more kill-happy brother eventually deigned to show up. It wasn't just the humans who needed to be worried, after all.

\---

"We lost him." Bruce said as soon as Tony's feet touched ground. He'd gotten a prayer from Steve to come meet them on Álfheimr and the Messenger had arrived within seconds. Upon touch-down he was greeted by the sight of the angel of death looking worn thin, tired and strained.

"What did you do to him?" Tony asked, going to sit where his friend was slump on the ground. Above them, Steve spluttered.

"I didn't-"

"Joking." Tony cut in when Steve's expression turned guilty, as if he thought it really was his fault. "You'd think you'd have learnt that by now." They'd only known each other since the dawn of time and all.

Bruce rubbed at his eyes, staring off into the distance. "The trail just vanished. It's not that people aren't dying, it's that no one is dying unusually."

"What does that mean? What is he up to?" Steve asked, and the angel of death shrugged. Tony, personally, had an idea or two.

"We should get back." He said instead of answering his brother's question, hoisting himself up and stretching out a hand for Bruce to take. "We need to regroup and rethink."

"You sure we should go now? Shouldn't you take a moment for your wing?" Steve wondered, concerned like the little ol' grandma he was. Tony rolled his eyes.

"My wing is better than yours, old man. I'm fine. It's Grimmy here I'm worried about." He nudged Bruce with his elbow, before moving to grab it when he swayed dangerously.

Bruce tried to bat him off, but neither Tony nor Steve were going to risk it.

"Come on, reaper man, my turn to drive."

"Maybe I should take him."

"I'm disabled, not an invalid." Tony snapped, patience thinning. His grip on Bruce became more pronounced. "I am capable of carrying one person."

"And I," Bruce stated, tearing his arm away. "Am capable of flying myself back to Earth. If the guy with the crippled wing can do it, so can I."

"Hey, my wing is actually significantly improved to how it was before."

"That doesn't make it less crippled." Bruce said airily, and alright, point. Tony's nickname of 'Iron Wing', whilst not particularly imaginative or even accurate, was striking in its imagery. Almost as striking as the actual wing itself.

Tony, stranded on Earth with a very painful and very injured wing, had been forced to compensate and fix it with Earth's evolving but yet to be advanced technology.

Steve had never been sure how to react to it – he was old-fashioned, and although the technology allowed Tony continued flight, he still seemed uncomfortable to look at it for longer than two minutes.

Bruce had been the exact opposite - he'd been impressed by the way Tony had managed to get himself, independently and with little grace to help him along the way, out of a fair few _very bad_ situations. Bruce had always been intrigued by the development humanity had made, actually, and always delighted in a spare moment to listen to Tony talk excitedly about science and discovery and everything angels already knew and more, but with that distinct human twist. It was perhaps not surprising, not with Bruce's job meaning he kept very close tabs on every species living, and Tony was glad he had at least one person there to _ooh_ and _ahh_ at his, if he did say so himself, increasingly brilliant wing modifications.

"Alright, but I'm coming with you." Tony finally agreed to Bruce’s stern gaze, wrapping a hand around Bruce's bicep. The angel didn't stop him, though he did make a noise of discontent toward his protective brother.

Steve speared them with a pathetic look which Tony pointedly glanced away from. Bruce reached out to pat the blond's forearm.

"We'll be alright." He insisted. "You should go call Natasha and Clint back to the helicarrier. We'll meet you there."

Steve didn't like it and it showed in the pursing of his lips and a strain to the skin around his eyes, but he disappeared regardless with only a nod and a resigned sigh. He knew there was no possible way of convincing either of his brothers to step down once they'd made up their minds, and also that there was only so much protesting he could feasibly get away with before Tony started getting prickly.

"So what's the plan now?" Tony asked Bruce once Steve had flown away.

"As you said," Bruce replied. "Regroup and rethink."

"Gonna be difficult without anything to base it off. We can't trace him, we can't predict him and we can't even warn anyone without people getting panicky. He lives off stuff like that. The more we can control the chaos the easier it’ll be for us."

"That might be harder on Earth now he's wiped out over twenty million people." Bruce managed weakly. "Asgard knew from the beginning, of course, or at least the seers did, but they're keeping quiet. I agree; the less commotion, the less Lucifer will impact the worlds."

Tony snorted, because that was just wishful thinking. Bruce didn't say anything else as they took to the skies, because he knew that too.


	4. Chapter 4

Hours later, back together at SHIELD’s HQ, Clint was getting to the point where his explosive mix of frustration, anticipation and boredom was causing him to make targets out of varying important helicarrier levers and buttons with his less than lethal arrows. He'd already made a game out of it and managed to hit three humans in the dead centre of their foreheads with paint-soaked soft-tips just because he'd found it funny. They were still trying to rub off the purple splodges from their faces.

He was a nervous waiter, the very opposite of patient. As far as SHIELD was concerned, the most unfortunate part was that he wasn’t the only one. He wasn’t even the worst of them.

Bruce had been joined by Natasha perched on the floor where the table used to be and had since been cleared away. They were doing something resembling yoga, making low humming noises, breathing deeply, calmly; an attempt to keep Bruce's blood pressure down.

Steve was talking very seriously with Fury, Coulson and Hill off to the left by the command post. Meanwhile, Tony had found a few scientists wandering about the place and had stolen their attentions away with his dazzling array of technobabble. They were explaining hydro-fusion to him as if he didn't already understand the fundamentals behind it. Tony was The Messenger. He'd heard the emails the first scientists had ever sent to each other about hydro-fusion. He'd heard the first emails ever sent _at all_. Tony was also a show-off. He displayed the repulsors he's created on a whim to the men before him, who almost resorted to cold-blooded murder simply to glance a fingertip over them. Tony warned against it.

 _This may be technology, but not as you know it. Angel magic and stuff_. It perhaps wasn't a good explanation, vague and relying on blind faith, but it was better than the truth: that this technology hadn't actually existed on any world or any culture until just this morning when Tony had willed them into being.

Actually, he was getting a little bored. Not with the scientists, but with this entire waiting gig. And he wasn’t alone. Despite the fact they were supposed to be meditating, Tony had seen Natasha and Bruce peeking an eye open every so often to watch Clint's increasingly agitated bowmanship, muttering something under their breaths. As The Messenger, Tony could hear it if he tapped in. They were taking bets.

Tony loudly threw down a twenty for Clint pointing an arrow at Fury in the next half-hour. Steve looked on disapprovingly. When he wasn't being deliberately obtuse it was almost as if he could read their minds.

Tony never got to find out whether he had won or not, however, as not even ten minutes passed until an alarm finally alerted and sent the entire vast room into a flurry of tumultuous panic. And these were trained professionals. Thank the Father that there weren't any civilians on board.

"Where is he?" Fury demanded, those alarms screaming for one reason only, but the angels didn't need the human sensors to be able to tell where and when Lucifer appeared. They could feel him approaching even from this distance and he was closing in fast.

A sudden impact on the hangar of the helicarrier could have easily knocked the floating fortress out of the very sky. The fact that it didn't said more about Lucifer's intentions than if he had pulled them straight from the air.

"He's here, sir." An agent shakily stated, and kudos to whoever had the nerves to say something so blatantly obvious to director Fury when his base of operations had just been hit by a proven hostile force. Whichever agent it was obviously had guts, but was lacking two functioning brain cells to rub together.

A visual appeared on the over-head screens of the hanger where Lucifer was struggling to stand in the small crater he'd made in his image. The image was grainy from the jarring impact it had endured, the room full of smoke and dust, but the demon was still visible to all with their eyes on it. And the picture he posed startled them all.

The humans were staring outright as the fallen angel stumbled just from trying to keep upright. The creature they saw was lean in build, dark-haired and tired. By the Father, did he look tired.

There were bags beneath his eyes and his cheeks had been hollowed thin. His hair was long, lank, disgusting, his fingernails black with dirt, and the tattered clothes he wore hung off him like a clown suit. They were caked in mud, blood and guts.

For lack of a better expression, he looked like hell.

The angels saw something a little different to the humans. Angels had heightened perceptions to that of mortals and were innately able to sense the grace about an individual.

Every living being had a glimmer of grace - from the plants to the angels to the giants to the insects. Even humans themselves had some amount of it, some more than others. Individual angels themselves altered in sensitivity to grace: a few saw it physically, where others simply felt it.

Steve, for example, reported grace to look something like a golden glow, like a halo – well, he would – whereas Bruce said grace radiated warmth. Clint found grace to be a low symphony of noise, where Natasha saw it as a pattern of swirls, an aura reaching out to everything around it, a life in itself; curious, ever changing, growing, adapting.

Grace, to Tony, appeared like a suit. It hovered around the person just above the skin, protected them like armour, moved with them as an extension of themselves. Tony could see the grace as well as feel it and he sometimes found it difficult to touch anything that wasn't an angel simply because their armour felt so pathetically thin; nothing more than aluminium sheet, when his was so powerful.

Lucifer had been the best of them, before. Bright eyed and beautiful, with a gentle smile and a ringing laugh like church bells on Christmas day: an analogy that was only later thought up when Tony realised why Clint avidly avoided churches. Lucifer had been tall and wonderful and handsome and kind, and to Steve, his grace had been the brightest thing in the universe; a beacon of home and happiness. To Bruce, it was an enveloping fire on a winter's night, whilst to Natasha, it had stretched out and taken up all the space and people around it, drawing them in, holding them close, accepting, loving. Tony, when he'd looked at Lucifer, could see the most glorious suit of armour he'd ever beheld, and Clint... Clint heard the bells.

They could sense their brother clearly now, nearby and solid and real. He was only a few floors away, easy enough to see through the CCTV, and none of them had been this close to him since he had fallen straight from heaven.

There was looking like hell, and then there was looking like you had just crawled _out of hell_ at the cost of millions of lives. Lucifer most certainly fit snugly in the second category, though Tony had yet to figure out how something so evil could appear so defenceless.

Perhaps it was the fact he'd disappear if he turned sideways, or that he was wavering dangerously where he stood. Perhaps it was the fact he was leaning on the spear he was holding like he would a cane, or it seemed as if a strong wind would take him with it. Likely, however, was that, to Tony, there was no armour anymore. Lucifer looked smaller than he'd ever seen him, even when he'd been bloodied and battered and bruised at the end of the war, simply because he was bereft of the shield his grace had been. He was unprotected, exposed, vulnerable. It made Tony sick.

The others could sense it, too – Lucifer’s glaring gracelessness. There was always a difference between knowing a fact and then experiencing it first-hand. Simply knowing that an amputation was going to debilitate you doesn't quite do the actual occurrence any justice. This was the same basic principle.

Clint, Tony could see, found it especially disturbing. Where Tony saw a void, and where Bruce felt cold, Clint heard silence. That hit Clint more powerfully then the archer would ever admit. But at the same time, Clint held no sympathy. Clint had seen over twenty million people die this afternoon. He wasn't feeling merciful.

"What should we do?" Fury asked, because there weren't many areas in which he felt out of his league, but this had been immediately bumped up to number one on the list. No one had anticipated Lucifer coming to _them_. They weren't prepared here. Here was supposed to be safe. Well, as safe as you could be against the devil.

Fury had deliberately kept his men from going inside the hangar to see what the commotion had been, because there was only so much SHIELD agents were trained for. They were educated, to some extent, on the Æsir or the Jötuns or even the hell-spawn from Muspellheim, but nothing could successfully prepare a human for the fully fledged wrath of an arch-angel, even as beaten and graceless as said archangel may be.

"Someone needs to talk to him." Steve spoke up in a sensible tone of voice, even while his words were anything but.

"Who?" Natasha snapped, her hand resting heavily on Clint's forearm, acting as an anchor whilst her eyes keeping a solid watch on the devil in the hangar.

"Tony." Bruce said guiltily, and it wasn't a question. Tony felt gazes point at him and spluttered out a protest.

"You're joking. He'll murder me! He'll rip me to shreds!"

"He won't." Steve stated calmly, before uncertainty shifted his expression. "Probably."

"That's real reassuring, Steve." Tony spat. He turned to face the others, giving Natasha and Bruce a significant eyeballing, begging for help. "Don't even think about sending me out there. Even if he _probably_ won't kill me, he'll corrupt me. Send Steve! Steve won't put up with his shit."

"He has a point." Clint interrupted, looking directly at Natasha because he knew, as Tony did, that she would be the most understanding about this. Natasha was very aware of how easily Lucifer could have a person bent around his little finger, and damned if Tony wasn't already one foot into that particular grave.

She looked to Bruce in defeat, and then to Steve. There was some amount of apology in her expression; unusual for her, but not strange, not when she was sending him to face off alone against _The_ fallen angel of fallen angels. Capital T and all.

Steve, poised and sturdy and all together far too heroic for his own good, simply nodded, accepting his mission. On their insistence, he took a moment to summon a shield, hand-crafted in heaven and beautifully painted with holy decoration. It was Steve's most powerful piece in his personal artillery.

With a blink of an eye he was gone, appearing now on the camera. A few humans, only now catching up with what had transpired during the brief few seconds of sudden angelic decisiveness, protested loudly, but they could do nothing now that Steve had landed and Lucifer had caught sight of him.

"Brother." Lucifer said, and even his voice was low, dark, broken. Frail, like the rest of him. It was nothing compared to the last time they'd heard him talk, back when he was standing glowing and golden at the gates of heaven, screaming a bloody battle-cry with an army at his side. His voice had echoed around every corner of heaven that day. Now, it hardly managed to rebound off the surrounding walls.

"Lucifer." Steve returned, moving solidly towards the devil. Lucifer, still with bloody spear in hand, tensed, took a step back, eyed the soldier suspiciously, aimed the pointy end to where Steve's chest would be should he continue on his determined path.

The archangel put a hand up to show he was unarmed. He then, to a great deal of panic and yelling in the hub of the helicarrier, dropped the shield he'd summoned to the floor.

"What the hell is he doing?" Clint cried, already reaching for his bow and about to fly out to join him. Natasha dug her nails into his forearm, shaking her head.

"Don't! You'll startle him." She obviously meant Lucifer, since it took more than an incensed Clint to startle Steve. Before now, they'd all assumed it'd take nothing short of their Father furious to scare their eldest brother as well.

"I don't care, he'll hurt Steve- _What_ does he think he's doing?" Clint's gaze had been caught by the screen, but he was also looking with his third eye into the hangar, just in case the security camera was deceiving him.

On the screen, humans and angels alike watched with morbid fascination as Steve took another step forward and put his hand to the edge of Lucifer's spear. Slowly, keeping eye contact with his brother, Steve pushed the weapon downwards until Lucifer dropped it with a resounding clatter. Lucifer's expression was strained and defiant, as it always seemed to be those last few months they had spent with him at home, but his eyes were weak, wet, raw. Steve had pulled Lucifer to his chest before Lucifer had time to process the loss of his sceptre, so he had no hope of understanding what was happening to him now.

Shock was playing a fanciful game across Lucifer's face right up until confusion won out, along with something which looked extraordinarily like grief. The devil felt sad, not angry. Tony would be the first to admit that he hadn't seen that one coming.

"Brother," Steve said into Lucifer's stringy hair as the embrace wore on and Lucifer's hand started to rise slowly, gently coming to rest on the centre of Steve's back. His fingers went to grip Steve's shirt, desperate and heartbroken, and Steve simply held him tighter.

But then his holy shield was back in his hands, and he'd smashed Lucifer across the head with it.

Steve may be perhaps the greatest examples of an angel because of the moral code he kept himself effortlessly bound by – the same ones he tried to impose upon his fellow warriors in battle. Something about the sanctity of life and how every person dead is someone else's child or how hurting people is wrong. His entire outlook on life was best represented, in Tony's humble opinion, by the fact Steve's weapon of choice was a shield.

Tony himself was all about long-distance weapons, a match with Clint, whereas Natasha and Thor liked to get up close and personal. Lucifer and Bruce were erratic in their preferred method of combat; the former because he had three major types of weapons, and they were all drastically stylistically different, and the other because he'd ideally keep clear of any types of conflict, but when he did get involved things tended to get messy.

Steve, however, took the high-road. His priority had always been about keeping himself and others safe. He'd never initiate a fight, never provoke another person, and certainly never bash his brother around the head with a shield made from a hallowed vibranium-adimantium alloy. There was very little in any of the worlds which could truly harm an angel, but vibranium was one of them, and adimantium another. Adamantine came from the angels in the first place. It was strong enough to hold Lucifer in the cage and had made up the compound for his handcuffs. Either of the two metals were easily capable to kill a Soldier of the Lord if used appropriately. Steve's shield was therefore more than capable of at least caving an angel's head in.

"What the hell is he doing?" Tony shouted, watching as Lucifer, feeble and inelegant as he seemed, was sent sprawling straight across the floor. He lay limp while their audience stared with sick enthralment at the proceedings.

"Did he just... kill him?" Agent Hill asked into the room, and only Bruce could answer that question. The angel of death looked queasy when they glanced to him. There seemed to be a lot of blood seeping out over the floor.

Steve stood his ground, watching the fallen angel steadily. He was expecting something, obviously, and therefore it was easy to deduce that Lucifer was still breathing. Now that Tony knew it, his panic over the thought of the devil dead seemed selfish and foolish. Lucifer wouldn't go down that effortlessly, and that was truly a shame for all of their sakes. If only it had been that easy.

But in that moment he'd looked so small and so fragile. And Tony had once loved him so dearly.

Lucifer's stagger as he tried once more to hoist himself upright was significantly more pronounced as he reached for the spear nearby and used it to take the weight his ringing head couldn't tell his trembling legs to bear. He was staring resolutely at the ground, accusingly, as if it were the floor's fault for his incapability to function, before that blazing hatred was suddenly thrown Steve's way.

Steve was on his back with Lucifer's weight keeping him there much quicker than The Soldier had time to react.

His movements had been a blur, but Tony had registered the slide of Lucifer's leg as he swept Steve's feet from him, then the high kick to the soldier's chest as he fell, then the smooth landing as the devil jumped and made sure the entirety of his mass knocked the wind straight out of the blond. Tony knew he'd seen that manoeuvre before, performed to the same elegant perfection as Lucifer had just shown, but demonstrated by Natasha. The Messenger wondered who taught whom.

A knife was in Lucifer's hand, pulled out from under the rags at his waist, and the Fallen pointed it directly at Steve's neck. It was black and oozed something dark, evil. Slowly, a drop fell from the tip and landed on Steve's throat. Tony could see it sizzle at the touch of the armour of grace Steve wore around him, and could see when it burnt a hole straight through his defences. Steve screamed.

Tony swore, moving sharply away from the monitors before he was stopped by Bruce grabbing his wrist.

"I'm going to save him!" He cried.

"Armed with what exactly?" Bruce snapped tiredly, wincing at loud noises, trying to block out the fact Steve had already stopped screaming and started choking.

It was a fair point. Tony hadn't come down prepared for battle, because Tony wasn't a fighter. Tony was a messenger, a builder, an inventor if you will, and he was good at what he was. That didn't mean that he could just stand by and watch Steve die when he could have done something to stop it. He patted his pockets then, realising he did have a trick up his sleeve: the repulsors, made holy by associated ownership.

"These'll have to do." He said, drawing them out. They glowed, blessed with holy light.

And then he was standing in the hangar, having landed heavily through design. He watched as his eldest brother glance upwards, towards him, already looking brighter, healthier, crueller. There was a smirk playing about his face as his eyes traced over his younger brother's form continuously before they hit a spot above Tony's head and his face drew together in distress.

"Your wing-" A repulsor blast hit him across his cheek, forcing his head to the side. His sentence was cut short, his familial concern hidden away behind his lank hair. Tony was disgusted.

Lucifer's voice was exactly the same now. Perhaps it was harder to tell across the CCTV feed, but there was nothing feeble in his tone now. Perhaps there never had been. Something about it still seemed more coarse, like he'd screamed himself mute on more occasions than any of them would like to consider, but the basics of it was that if Tony just closed his eyes and listened, Lucifer would be the same holy, beautiful angel again, and not this twisted wreck of being which only superficially looked like his brother.

Tony could see, even from his awkward vantage point, that Steve's neck was crawling with the blackness which had seeped under his skin, aiming deep to his very bones and his core where the centre his grace was kept safe. It was going to destroy everything he was from the inside out. He was gasping, trying to find air to breath, but nothing was coming and his eyes were becoming hazy.

Lucifer, sitting above him, spat out blood.

There was a streak across the devil's jaw made gory by the flesh the repulsor blast had burnt off. Lucifer put a hand to it, eyes staring straight into Tony's own, as it sparked a dark green, healing the muscle and skin until nothing remained to indicate he'd been so much as scratched.

That hadn't been grace. But then, it hadn't been the demons' evil, either. Tony had no idea what power he had just used to heal himself.

Lucifer stood. Involuntarily, Tony took a step back.

Even without any grace to call his own, as Tony was sharply reminded, Lucifer still has more power to spare than many angels could boast to possess in their lifetimes.

Lucifer's face was ugly with anger, seething with hatred, and Tony realised all at once that Steve and he were both a lost cause. A bold rescue attempt from their brothers would do nobody any good because Lucifer was glowing with energy that was neither holy nor unholy, and it spread to every corner of the hangar and outwards to consume the entirety of the helicarrier. Nothing could stop Lucifer from murdering them both now bar a miracle from the father himself, but if he was going to step in he would have done so long before Tony did something idiotic like hit the devil around the face with a piece of technology which _didn't actually exist_.

But then something miraculous _did_ happen, as Tony heard an almighty cry ring down from the heavens.

"Lucifer!"

The thunderous roar was followed, not at all coincidentally, by an even more deafening crash of thunder. Lightning came afterwards, illuminating a silhouette vaulting across the sky, hammer pointed, voice merciless and foreboding. To Lucifer, that is. To Tony, it was a signal that it was time to buy his Father a thank you basket. Maybe even go to church occasionally.

Lucifer's look became, somehow, even darker, every emotion bar sheer, heaving fury wiped clean from his face and mind, his eyes wild with animalistic rage. Tony could have taken this as his chance to get away, to get Steve clear along with him, but something within him with the same tone of morals as The Soldier made his feet move to where he calculated Thor would land, and as soon as he got there, only seconds before the larger angel did, Natasha and Clint were alongside him, grabbing Thor's arms when his feet hit the metal floor whilst Tony pushed his hands hard against Thor's chest.

The problem with Thor was that _sturdy_ word again. _Built like a brick shithouse_ , was another colourful human idiom which seemed to beautifully summarise what Thor was and why it was still difficult for even three angels to keep him from charging straight into Lucifer and planting his electrified hammer into the devil's prefrontal cortex.

"Leave him!" Natasha ordered, because Tony wasn't the only one who could guess what a furious angel burdened with the title _The Thunder of God_ could do to a flying metal death-trap should he unleash that holy, thundery hammer of his. There were now seven angels here who would find that experience somewhat hindering, and hundreds of humans who'd consider it a whole lot more serious. 

Thor looked down at them for a brief second each, confusion clouding the sky blue eyes, making the blond look altogether too idiotic and innocent even when his mouth was furious, before a type of understanding dawned upon him, which all of three of the particular angels holding him back recognised much too easily.

"Lucifer!" He roared again, pushing against his three siblings, each of them hoisting their entire body weights and angelic strength against Thor so he couldn't draw any nearer to the creature who'd sooner goad him to destroy them all than think for a second about his own wellbeing.

"We're not compromised!" Tony ground out, his teeth clenched with his struggles against his mightiest brother. It was a weak argument, doomed to fail, but factual none-the-less. Hopefully. Lucifer hadn't touched him. He hadn't even had time to speak to him. So, it was probably true. "Just put down the hammer! You'll kill us all!"

Lucifer was laughing in the background, judging himself safe enough from The Thunder when the angels were trying so hard to keep the petty humans alive. Tony, as focused as he was on Thor's face, could see the moment when his gaze slipped from Lucifer to the twitching, twisting body on the hangar floor.

Further enraged, almost driven mad by fury, he turned to Lucifer, and then to Tony. He bellowed, "You want me to put the hammer down?"

And then he threw it at the devil.

\--

It punched a hole straight through Lucifer's body and his green eyes were wide as they met Thor's blue irises.

Thor quite obviously felt the same shock and went slack in his siblings' arms, because he'd never taken a moment to imagine what would happen if he actually _hit_ his brother.

Then the image phased out with a jitter and the illusion shattered. Of course the hammer had gone through him, as it hadn't been Lucifer at all.

Tony saw the real thing suddenly appear behind the angel of thunder with a light flap of wings and a raised spear, but there wasn't enough time to shout.

However, everyone constantly underestimated Thor, even his own family. With his broad shoulders and rock-hard muscles, it was hard to forget he was a warrior, but his beautiful face and jovial smile often meant that others forgot what being a warrior entailed. Anyone could swing a hammer, but it took skill to swing before your opponent even realised you had the hammer back in the first place.

The blow caught Lucifer around the face, in the same place which Tony had hit him hard with holy light, and knocked him back a few steps. Burning with magic and fast-returning strength and power, Lucifer didn't fall this time.

When he looked up he realised he had an arrow, a knife, a hammer and a holy repulsor (burning as it was with the power of God, it looked less ridiculous then it sounded) aimed straight between his eyes. Glaring quite especially at Thor and swiping his tongue across bloody teeth, he raised his hands in surrender. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. Been distracted by other writing projects. By 'distracted', I mean 'consumed'. Anyway here you go =D

There was a cell in the depth of the helicarrier which could withstand anything except the claws of the mutant James Howlett. And now, it seems, any sort of angel with functioning wings. But then, it wasn't built with angels in mind.

It was made for mutants; any and all types. The cell was one of the most useful weapons in the entire SHIELD arsenal against hostile super-humans like Magneto or Mystique. It was unbreakable, resistant to any sorts of temperatures, and made almost entirely of plastic. Whenever a new mutant power showed up on SHIELD's databases, the cell was adapted to accommodate and hinder the use of the new mutation. They'd even learnt how to stop telepathic waves penetrating the glass.

It was used as a temporary home for mutant - and occasionally human - prisoners before they had cells personalised to account for their specific genetic advancements.

Added to that, if the worst came to the worst, there was also a button which dropped the cell straight through the helicarrier and out of the bottom. After that there was only air and the ground to break the prisoner's fall.

\---

SHIELD had the devil in custody.

No matter how many times he repeated it to himself, Tony still couldn't quite wrap his head around the idea. SHIELD had Lucifer in custody. _Humans_ had been put in charge of keeping his big brother at bay. This all seemed far too suspicious if only because, for some reason, Lucifer was still here.

There was something else going on here, but Tony couldn't figure it out.

Damn it, what was his play?

Behind where he paced, Tony could hear the shuffling of people trying to lay Steve down on the hastily cleared table.

They'd all relocated to the closest lab and not the medical wing of the helicarrier because there wasn't much human medicine could do for an angel. Tony had learnt that the hard way the first time around. What Bruce needed to help Steve was a whole host of other more fizzly things.

What Bruce was going to do was not extract the evil from Steve's body. It had reacted quickly; had too much time to sink deep, deep into Steve. They had wasted too long trying to restrain Thor and keep everyone alive. Steve needed something a little more extreme to cure him now.

The Soldier had passed out almost as soon as the gunk had eased its way under his skin, burning away his grace as it travelled through him. He'd stopped breathing too many times to count. It was just lucky that angels were made out of powerful stuff because anything lesser would have perished instantly.

Bruce's plan was transformation: if they couldn't extract it, then they'd have to change it. That was easy enough for him because that was his thing. The rest of them left him to it.

Whatever it was, it sounded painful. Clint was pointedly looking the other way.

Coulson, standing guard nearby, was doing the exact opposite. He was clutching something in his hands, mournfully watching the angel lying unconscious and dying on the table.

Tony didn't need to be an angel, or even The Messenger, to recognise praying when he saw it.

\---

They'd glossed the cell with holy water in between the moment the devil appeared in their plane hangar and the time when they brought him down in handcuffs. How was anyone's guess, but if there was bad one thing to be said about SHIELD, it wouldn't be criticising their efficiency.

When they closed the door behind Lucifer he looked at his trap and reached out to touch the glass, quickly withdrawing his fingers with a hiss before had even made contact.

"Holy water." Fury said snidely, smiling at his quiet prisoner. "In case it's unclear."

Lucifer huffed a laugh. "It's an impressive cage, for a human design." He spared a glance at the cameras, before studying the mechanics of the roof. The lights buzzed irately not far above his head. He was almost too tall for the cell. "Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for many things a lot stronger than you." Fury didn't know that, and it was probably untrue, but if anything it'd grate on the devil's fragile ego.

Lucifer's eyes burned with great humour. Fury obviously didn't get the joke. "I know of your 'super humans'. 'Mutants', as you call them? What a cruel thing to name your fellows. They're the next stage of human evolution. Surely you should be pandering to them, not going out of your way to insult their very existence."

"And how would you know so much about it? You only got out of your previous cage this morning."

"What I find interesting," Lucifer continued as if Fury hadn't spoken at all. "Is that you're all so willing to murder each other. Mutants and humans are pitted for a war."

"It's funny you should speak of war," Fury growled lowly at Lucifer's politely interested expression. It was too innocent and out of place on a blood-splattered face to look truly sincere. "Since, as I understand it, you're the reason so many of _your_ brothers are dead."

Lucifer conceded to the point gracefully. "I knew the costs of my war. I wonder if you know yours?"

"The only war I see is the one you're bringing."

Lucifer laughed, and bells rung inside the helicarrier. "I wouldn't worry so, General. It will not be lengthy."

Watching the CCTV from the other side of the helicarrier, Clint asked the angels and the two humans what Lucifer's interest in mutants was. Natasha and Tony looked at each other, concerned but trying not to show it. Bruce, who would otherwise be twitchy over the entire situation was, thankfully, distracted by keeping an eye on Steve's condition.

"He created the mutants." Clint then realised with a sudden spark of acute insight, startling the angels and humans alike. Tony spluttered ridiculously, where Natasha and Hill paled. It was Agent Coulson who kept his head together and calmly asked what the archer meant.

"It's obvious now that I think about it," Clint was muttering more to himself than to his brothers. "He nudges evolution along and if his plans fail and he never escapes then humanity will have torn itself apart. It just takes a little longer. The mutants will win eventually, of course, but if you look close enough you'll see how mutants have a way of burning themselves out. That's only to be expected, because they're not ready for it yet. They shouldn't exist for another few hundred years."

Tony cursed. "Bastard." They'd all known it'd been too sudden. Only someone with the powers of an archangel would have the capacity to push humanity a little further along the natural course of time, and only one archangel would ever think to do it.

"My brother is here." Lucifer said, glancing at the security cameras, his gaze almost as heavy across the cameras as a physical presence would have been. "I see he still makes play he's an angel." Bruce stiffened, now listening intently, knowing he was being addressed.

"What is he, then?" Fury asked, curious despite himself. Willing to play along, if only to keep the devil talking.

"A beast, like me. I didn't see him earlier, but I can feel his grace. Do send him my regards." He laughed again joyfully, and the helicarrier continued to resonate with the empty echo of the ringing bells.

\---

Thor visited his brother first. It wasn't a wise decision and Tony tried to argue the point, but when had any of them ever listened to him?

As far as Thor was aware, it was his right to see Lucifer alone. He had been the one angel who believed in Lucifer, even after he'd gone on his extended vacation down south. Additionally, he had been the only angel to be able to track Lucifer down, _and_ he'd been the one who had chased Lucifer away from the planet after Niger and Congo. If it hadn't been for Thor, a few more countries would have fallen victim to the same fate. Thor, therefore, felt owed a boon or two.

Tony had advised against Thor's visitation rights because calling Thor _upset_ was a gross understatement. Thor hadn't been happy to land down on Earth to find one of his brothers writhing on the floor, and the others seemingly compromised.

Neither had he been overjoyed when he realised that Lucifer had only stopped to take a breather in order to try to put a spear through his neck.

He certainly wasn't happy that the humans had Lucifer locked up, but like Tony, that was more suspicion of Lucifer's motives than any hostility towards the mortals themselves.

He wasn't going down there to question Lucifer, though he said he was. Tony knew his brother, and knew Thor was going down there to shout, slam his hammer around and make some pathetic plea aimed towards Lucifer's morals. Thor didn't seem to realise Lucifer _had_ no morals. It wasn't a cry for attention anymore; Lucifer was genuinely just there to raze the world to ashes.

Tony was also worried about his brother's mind. Thor may have been a fine warrior, but he had no defence against Lucifer, who could wield thoughts and insecurities like a scalpel and finely shred a psyche to ribbons.

"I will be fine." Thor tried to reassure him before he set off to the other side of the metal ship, but Tony wasn't comforted. He kept his eyes on the surveillance as Thor stormed the path down to see their brother.

"I missed you too!" Lucifer chuckled when Thor greeted him by slamming his fist on the glass. A small crack was produced, which went some ways to calming the frayed nerves of the angels watching the encounter. Even if it was human by design, if Thor had a tough time getting in then Lucifer would have to double that. "Oh, my brother. I adore your new name. Does that make me Loki?"

"Why are you doing this?" Thor growled, leaning close to the glass and snarling, trying his best to seem intimidating. He would have been if his wrath was aimed towards anyone who wasn't Lucifer.

Lucifer in turn was not impressed by his brother's display of temper. Rather, he seemed to find it tedious.

"Why not? They did not deserve to live."

"And what do you plan to do once you've wiped them out?" Thor demanded.

"Take back control of the Earth, of course."

Thor's anger seeped from him in an instant, and he looked at his brother so tenderly, so sadly. Lucifer seemed struck by it, his posture faltering as his hands twitched and his squared shoulders hesitated.

"You think yourself better than they are?" Thor asked.

Lucifer's face shuttered with confusion. A crease gave him away, along with the questioning tone in his voice when he replied: "Of course."

"Then you miss the point of our father's creation, brother."

" _Your_ father." Lucifer hissed, and Thor fell quiet. "I'd like to know what your plan is, my brothers." Lucifer continued, raising a finger as his attitude twisted back to maliciousness and amusement, as if he'd never shown sadness, never been surprised, never denied the Holy Lord, his Father. "Surely you can't assume you're capable of stopping me."

"We will protect this Earth, Lucifer." Thor snapped, and Lucifer returned it with a wide show of teeth and a snarl of a laugh.

"And what a wonderful job you're doing, brother! Have you not seen the amount wars the humans declare in The Father's name! The droves of innocent slaughtered under false pretences whilst you sit idly by in Heaven! What good can you do from there other than comfort the dead? Or, at least, the ones that aren't with me."

Thor slammed his hands again and Lucifer looked like he wanted to return the gesture. The dim golden glow of the holy water painting the cell hindered him, and he glared at the angel on the opposite side instead.

"Come back and preach when you aren't as guilty as I am." He hissed.

\---

Fury had returned to the acquired lab as soon as Thor had left to see Lucifer, asking after Steve. Bruce was sitting by his brother, worrying with his glasses, but he nodded to Fury anyway and pronounced into the room that the archangel would be fine. Collective held breaths were released, and everyone relaxed a bit further. In an apocalyptic situation there was only so much relaxing you could do, so it had to be taken where it was found, no matter how small a quantity.

"Why is an angel called 'Thor'?" Was his first question, and one which should have been asked a while back. "I thought that was a pagan thing."

"It is. It's a nickname he acquired ages ago on Earth. They thought he was a god, and it stuck. Like Natasha or Clint or Bruce." Tony explained with a shrug, drawing the human's attention to him. "His is just more relevant than most others. That's what happens. Names get boring after a couple of millennia."

"What's his real name?"

"Ramiel. Not as exciting as 'Thor', in my opinion."

"Your wings." The human suddenly directed at him, startling the Messenger. All the angels turned their head to them, focusing specifically on Tony's damaged one. But Fury couldn't possibly know about that. Hardly any humans in the entire expansion of history had ever been able to see an angel's wings, and the majority of those who said they could were either delusional or lying.

"I have two." Tony said, confused. "We all do." Well, the seraphim had six each, but that wasn't relevant.

"They're how you travel, right? You don't just teleport from point A to B, but you actively fly."

"We fly very fast." Tony rolled his eyes. "Quick enough to be mistaken for teleportation, yeah. Why?"

Fury gave him a long look. "Your big brother seemed particularly interested in yours."

Tony remembered, back in the hangar when Lucifer had seen him for the first time in thousands of years. He recalled the astonished, horrified look, which had been strikingly similar to how Steve had reacted when he'd first seen Tony's wing modifications.

"It's had a bit of repair work done and Luci was a bit surprised."

"Repair work? What did you do, break it?"

"Yes." 'Break' was a verb. 'Hideously mutilate' was a verb _and_ an adverb. 

"How?"

Tony shrugged. "Accident."

And he wasn't lying: it _had_ been an accident.

Six years ago, Tony had picked up a message coming from the middle of space. It had been close to Earth, but also a significant amount of distance away from the atmosphere. He found a new satellite there, more advanced than anything the humans had previously come up with, and, intrigued, he followed the signal downwards. He, idiotically, hadn't been paying a great deal of attention to his surroundings, so when he hit a plane it had been his entirely his fault.

He'd teleported away from the scene as soon as he'd felt the impact of his wing on the flying machine. It was an instinct; one which told him he was injured and he needed to get far away so not to be seen as a potential target. Once you're in a war you never get out, he supposed.  You certainly never stop thinking like you're in one. Humans called that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The angel had called it every day life.

His flight had faltered half way across the globe when his instinct proved to be the wrong choice of action and his wing started blazing like hellfire. He'd crashed heavily in a desert and screamed, landing hard on his injured limb.

He had felt rather than heard it snap, and he'd watched dizzily as the blood flowed from the joint. He was down, an important bone was definitely broken, and he'd never fly again. The shock was dimming the world around him, and nothing felt real as he felt the sand around him slip away.

He awoke somewhere new, and his grief finally hit him full force when he realised someone had taken the time to bandage him up, but had completely ignored his wing.

It was lying limp on one side, useless and immovable, and any twitch of the limb send Tony into searing agony. He'd likely most seriously damaged his carpometacarpus, though he didn't dare touch the wing to check.

"Fuck," he had breathed into the open air, and that was when a human presence made itself known.

The human almost blinded Tony with the grace he wore about himself, and the man, Yinsen, explained where they both were.

"You were captured in the desert. What were you doing out there?"

"Captured by what?" He'd asked weakly, still wheezing from pain, and Yinsen had put a hand to his shoulder and sat down beside him.

He was in a cave, he learnt quickly enough, trapped by a terrorist group called The Ten Rings. They wanted to assess his worth to them before executing him. It was a shame he wasn't a human, because having official documents and a family willing to pay the price of his release would have been really useful right about then.

He couldn't blame Yinsen for not attending to his wing because the man couldn't see it, but that didn't stop him being angry. He'd tried to explain to Yinsen why he was still in such pain when his wounds were shallow at best, but Yinsen worried over his psyche instead of his body once he'd told the human the truth.

Then the men came, and they wanted to know who he was and where he was from. Tony refused to tell them anything, knowing that even if he did, even if he told them everything, they would perceive him to be a liar. So he remained firm and tried not to scream when they tortured him to unconsciousness.

It was hard to kill an angel. It took more than what they had in that cave to even pose a serious threat to Tony's immortality. That wasn't his concern. His concern was that it really wasn't all that hard to hurt him.

He had been kept on drugs which blurred his mind and his vision, and his grace was preoccupied trying to fix his innards, but there was Yinsen, a shining beacon of grace in a dark and scary corner of Earth, and it had been the human’s determination to get Tony out alive which spurred the angel into regaining his pride and starting to act like the heavenly being he was.

His first task had been to fix his wing.

It had been difficult, what with the severe lack of resources, but it didn't have to be pretty or delicate: it just had to be a mechanism which worked. There had been sources of raw material dotted around the cave, and just enough for what he planned on doing. With a little of his withered grace and a bit of his returning strength, he had been able to mould the metals into whatever shape he wished.

Yinsen still hadn't understood his motivations, but encouraged the project. Whether it was the sort of encouragement one gave to a dying mental patient or whether it was genuine patience and acceptance, Tony had never been too sure.

"What is that?" He'd asked when Tony had pieced together a heavy and graceless hunk of junk which just managed to pass as a piece of active mechanics.

"It'll act as a solid structure in place of a bone where mine has been broken.  It won't fly well, but it _will_ fly, and that's the main thing."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Let's just say I won't be making any long journeys with it." And with that, along with one of Yinsen's trademarked mother-hen protective looks, he emptied all the grace he could muster and attached it to the wing.

When it had latched onto his flesh and feathers, it felt as if his bone was breaking all over again. He hunched over the tabletop and tried not to scream. Yinsen had been by his side in an instant, asking what was wrong, but Tony couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but bite down on his tongue and wait for the pain to stop.

When the rush of agony had trickled down to proportions reasonable enough for Tony to think through, he put his head heavily in his hands and focused on breathing. After, he'd turned his attention back to his wing and was delighted to find it moving again. It was stiff, it was painful, but it was working.

Another few weeks had Tony trying to rehabilitate himself, and Yinsen was proven to be more liable to believing his story when he'd seen Tony's hands glow and then, from his perspective, disappear a bit of metal. That wasn't to say that he was convinced, but he was now accepting of the fact Tony was more than he seemed.

And then they had escaped. And then Yinsen had been shot.

Tony still hadn't been himself when they had tried to run, and it was his fault Yinsen died. He'd attempted to fly them clear of the cave completely, but he'd only managed to get them to the mouth of the cave. There had been men with guns waiting for them, tense and terrified.

It was there in the sunlight cast in from the entrance that Tony found his berserk button. Looking to the injured man in the corner, the glory of the archangel rose up and out of him. He scared and awed the men, their eyes widening with fear and amazement, before they dropped down dead. Hoisting up Yinsen's riddled body, Tony had taken flight, destroying the base as he shot off into the desert.

The man had still been breathing when Tony's wings had faltered, and he was just thankful he wasn't high up enough in the air to break something else important.

Tony, desperate and frustrated and cursing whichever of his brothers was listening, wasn't capable of helping Yinsen. He was an angel, why couldn't he help when a man needed him most? Yinsen died with a wondrous look in his eye as he watched Tony, and Tony promised him the reunion with his family. Tony could do nothing else.

A helicopter found them three days later. Tony had moved the two of them essentially nowhere, too exhausted to trudge a weary path through the desert and not willing to leave Yinsen's body alone. Neither of them needed food or water, so Tony lay there and stared at the sky and the stars at night and wondered why Bruce hadn't come to collect his new friend, or why his brothers hadn't found him.

The helicopter had American soldiers inside it, and they came pouring out, asking irritating questions like who Tony was and why he was sleeping next to a corpse. He gave them a false name when they assumed he was an American citizen, and he copied Colonel James Rhodes' accent when spoken to. He told the truth about Yinsen. He told them it was his duty to return Yinsen to his hometown.

Tony had told Rhodes that Yinsen was from a town called Gulmira, and Rhodes had shaken his head.

"No-go zone." He stated solemnly, and that was the end of that. Tony held Yinsen's hand until the body was forcefully taken from him, and then they sat him on a plane with Colonel Rhodes and was told they were taking him 'home'.

As Rhodes had found him, apparently he was now Rhodes' responsibility. He grew bored of his false name soon enough and demanded a nickname. "Call me Ed, Eddie, whatever you want, just don't, for the love of the Almighty Himself, call me Edward."

Tony played off the trauma victim, a tortured amnesiac, unable to recall his surname and address and family. He wasn't certain Rhodes believed him, but no one was about to interrogate a man just released from months of captivity. There were ethics and other silly things like that which had to be taken into consideration.

As long as he wasn't a threat, they weren't going to grill him. At least not for now. And that was fine with Tony. He only needed a little bit of time.

There was a base in California - Rhodes' home state - where they landed in, and where Tony was given a place to sleep. He was told to stay put where he was. So, naturally, he did the exact opposite.

Malibu was lovely in summer. Truly, wonderfully lovely. Not that he couldn't say that about most of the year: seasons didn't exist in California, and that was fine by him. Yes, there was a certain charm about Norway in winter, in a way which you certainly never forgot once it was experienced, but Tony much preferred the heat and the necessity for sunglasses all year round.

Lucifer and Thor had always liked Scandinavia. That was their thing. Tony, on the other hand, had always been more drawn towards places closer the equator, or anywhere which involved a beach and bikinis.

He'd gone out for a reason, not because he'd been starved for sun in the last few days in Afghanistan, but he had needed some better tech for his wing. And then there was OsCorp Industries looming over him, shining bright like the Holy Grail itself. Perfect.

Yes, OsCorp was a chemical company based in New York. Tony knew that. He also knew that they were looking into biochemical engineering, and that's the direction he wanted to go into. So, with a flick of the hand, a small miracle appeared – one which gave him a seemingly legitimate visitors pass and took up a little too much of his gradually returning grace. He strolled in with full intent to quietly sneak one or two things away.

And there he'd met Pepper Potts.

She was the head woman for the California branch, second only to Obadiah Stane. OsCorp had decided to spread across the country when it realised its major opposition was Hammer Tech, and no one liked Hammer Tech. Not even Justin Hammer liked Hammer Tech, and was always trying to steal away Osborn's stuff. It was quite cute, really. Imitation _is_ the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

Ms. Potts knew everyone under her roof. Perhaps not as well as she would like, seeing as her job was heavier than even she'd anticipated, but she at least knew the names and faces of everyone who was supposed to be in the building at any given time. And a man named Edward Irons was not on any of her lists. Tony hadn't thought that far ahead, thinking no one would notice so long as he appeared as if he knew what he was doing.

Pepper cornered him before he had a chance to steal anything from under OsCorp's nose, a glare to her eyes and her mouth pressed together in a serious frown.

"What are you doing here?"

"You wouldn't throw me out would you? I’m hot." He said, brain-to-mouth filter non-functional as usual. However, upon his words she gave him a once over and raised her brow. He grinned cheekily at her when she brought her gaze back to his face. "Like what you see?"

It was a miracle she hadn't slapped him even once during what would prove to be a long if not complicated friendship.

She hadn't been pleased with him, no matter how many white lies he told her. She wasn't much happier when she eventually beat the truth out of him. There really was no pleasing that woman. Tony adored her.

She'd kicked him out after an hour of severe questioning in her office, before Stane interrupted to ask why she was shirking her duties. Pepper, apparently, had lost track of the time as she'd never done before. Tony grinned at the fact that had been his fault.

He returned to Rhodes and his screaming fits, and once the man had calmed down ("Don't you ever leave again without my permission, do you hear me?" A mantra repeated over and over again for at least twenty minutes), Tony asked about a downed plane which had caused this whole messy debacle three months previously. He and Rhodes scoured the internet until they found something: Thirty dead over Peru, and a lot more injured. Both pilots killed. The black box said they hit something, though no one had any idea what it was. Whatever it was ripped one of the wings in half.

Well, it wasn't as if Tony didn't feel guilty enough for leading Yinsen to his death. He wondered how many other people he was going to kill on this impromptu vacation to the mortal realm.

Humans were so delicate. Looking to Rhodes, the army colonel who was running a risk to his life every day, drove home the sheer fragility of mortals. Why the Father would put his mind to creating a being so short-lived and easily broken was a mystery to all angels, even thousands of years after the first one took its first delicate steps. Angels weren't designed for the Earth - they were too strong, even at their weakest. They could hurt so many, so quickly, as Tony had done without even realising.

He had to leave, but he didn't have the capacity. He still wanted to know where the hell his brothers were and why they hadn't thought to look for him.

Rhodes had forgiven him his wonderings, and that was good, because he left the base the next day again, returning to OsCorp. Miss Potts hadn't been as happy as he’d have liked to see him again.

"You know you can get everything you want for cheap at Hammer Tech." She said, and Tony's grimace had told an eloquent story. She smiled at him, because this was apparently the right answer. "You can't steal our tech, Mr. Irons, so don't even think about it."

"I don't have any money."

"You had enough money for your impressive forged visitors pass." She pointed out, and a revelation dawned on him. For someone so intelligent, he had moments where he was staggeringly dim-witted.

"I have money." He corrected. Not a lot, and he felt a bit bad for even more divine forgery, but not as bad as the growing anxiety that came of standing on the Earth that didn't belong to him. What he wouldn't give to get home. A bit of money created through an arch-angel's miracle couldn't be all bad. It was just enough to see him home, with everyone safe and the humans none-the-wiser.

The materials were beautiful to work with, and his initial design easy enough to alter for the newer, streamlined, top-of-the-range human technology.  Rhodes - affectionately nicknamed Rhodey as soon as he'd agreed to cater to Tony's boredom just to stop him from walking straight off base-camp without anyone being able to figure out how - had given him some space at the base to work with, and he then started to appear more frequently just to stare at what Tony had done with the room.

He'd scrawled complex equations across the walls when he finally got fed up with the paper, and the basic laptop Rhodey had given him had been modified to something even more advanced then OsCorps would see in the next twenty years. Hammer, the next hundred.

Pepper dropped by once, just out of curiosity on a lunch-break she rarely took, and then kept on coming back at least once every two days. Tony wondered if she ever stored some of this information away to take back to OsCorp, but Tony also trusted her and accepted that his paranoid delusions were just that. He'd been on edge lately, after everything that had happened to him over the last... few thousand years. The recent months had been particularly harsh on how far he was willing to trust, which had never been substantial to begin with.

He'd finished his newest design and built the technologically advanced wing-joint just over three weeks into his stay in America, and was quite prepared to leave. And then there was Rhodey, who wasn't happy when Tony tried to say goodbye.

Tony, grace almost completely restored to its former glory the week before, could have just left on his own terms, but the wing was taking some getting used to and he _did_ want to take some amount of baby steps. Maybe a flight to New York, first, and then to Tokyo, and then to South Africa. _Then_ he could go home.

"We still don't know who you are." Rhodey had growled. "You could be anyone. Until we found out where you come from, you will not be leaving this base."

Tony, unhappy and feeling angry and trapped, disappeared before him without a second thought. He didn’t stop to consider how it would seem to the mortal; a man just blinking straight out of existence. He only considered it when he returned several hours later to find the base on high alert. When he walked back through the doors, having gone on the most glorious of flights around the country, he had a gun pointed to his forehead by none other than Rhodey himself. Pepper was standing next to the colonel, worry clouding her features. She had obviously been brought in for questioning to see how much she knew.

Tony had been forced to admit what he was, because for once lies weren't about to cut it. Pepper had that look on her face again, the one she used when some amount of truth slipped from his lips. Was it so unbelievable to think that Tony was an angel? Tony didn't think so. He certainly looked the part, if he did say so himself.

When their disbelief continued, when Rhodey got more aggressive out of panic, Tony was forced to show them his wings. It was nothing more than a flash, but it took considerable energy to force the human psyche to perceive things which didn't exist on the same astral plane. He didn't like doing it often. He'd never had the chance to show Yinsen, but by the end Tony figured the man had known.

However, for Pepper and Rhodey, he'd go that extra mile, and after a little bit of arguing they even came to finally accept that he was telling the truth.

But they still wouldn't let him leave.

They didn't seem to understand. Tony was an angel: he was a destructive force unleashed upon mankind. He'd made that plane crash, and he'd killed those people in Afghanistan, and he'd been the cause of so many innocent deaths, and a lot more not so innocent ones. Pepper looked at him sadly, and Rhodey shook his head.

"You've done nothing since you got to the base." He explained softly. "The rest were accidents."

"Murdering a hundred people in cold blood is not an accident!" Tony had tried to insist.

"They also tried to kill _you_." That didn't make it okay, but it worked to calm Tony down.

"What's your real name?" Pepper had asked, and Tony gave it with some hesitance, even now that they knew the truth.

"Gabriel? What, you mean like the angel who spoke to Mary, that Gabriel?"

"I _am_ the Messenger. I bring the news." He shrugged. Yes, he remembered Mary. It was hard to forget telling a young, virgin girl, no more than a child, that she was pregnant with the saviour of mankind. Things like that get emblazoned in your head forever, especially when her first reaction had been terror about what she was supposed to tell her husband, whether she'd even survive the childbirth, or how they'd manage on Joseph's pitiful wages. Times were tough in every age, and Tony had been forced to tell a lot of bad news over time, but that one should have been special, it should have been happy. Instead, Mary had cried.

\--

Tony had met Happy for the first time when Pepper had taken him on a Christmas celebration. Happy and Tony had clicked instantly, though it might have been harder to tell looking in than it was looking out.

Pepper had given him his Breitling that Christmas. It was Tony’s favourite watch.

Angels didn't celebrate Christmas. It was originally a Pagan celebration, and that was fine, but it wasn't relevant to them. Tony, whilst down on Earth, learnt to appreciate why exactly the humans put so much stock into it. Not a great deal of humans, at least not the people _he_ was socialising with, saw it as a particularly religious time. Some went to midnight mass, certainly, and the carollers were charming in their own way, but the Christmas spirit revolved around Santa Claus, presents, and booze. So much booze. Yes, Tony was truly thankful for the holidays.

He finally managed to get home when Bruce showed up several months later, suddenly and without any fanfare, in the middle of lunch with Pepper and Rhodey. They had started from the sudden intrusion, especially when Bruce embraced Tony tightly.

"We _were_ looking for you." The other angel insisted. "But something came up."

That something proved to be a close-call involving the devil walking almost free. Tony had gone straight home with Bruce, duty calling. Since then they’d been on alert, and Tony hadn’t been able to shake himself loose of his obligations to heaven. It wasn't until now, six years later, when that close-call finally became a reality, that Tony realised how much he missed Earth and the humans upon it.

He loved his brothers, but he had also known them for thousands of years. That amount of time meant you came to know everything about a person. Earth was different: it was ever changing, dynamic, interesting, fun. And that was everything to do with the people.

Watching it from the grand window of the helicarrier, Tony knew he'd be sad to see the planet go. He'd be sad to see _the humans_ go. And he then realised, thinking back, that he'd never gotten to tell Pepper and Rhodey and Happy goodbye. 


	6. Chapter 6

Lucifer paused in his pacing, smiled, and turned.

Not even a flutter of wings had introduced her as Natasha appeared afore his cage, yet he could still feel her lingering behind him. To him, grace seemed like a blaze, flickering over every angel's shoulder. Natasha's burnt like the sun, and hers consuming everything with its power.

"Brother," she greeted, and he nodded to her amicably.

"My dear Raziel," he took two steps towards her and stopped. She liked the distance he had kept between them, and felt all the better for the solid glass keeping them apart. She didn't want to test what he'd do to her if he had her in his grip, much like she wasn't keen on seeing what she'd do to _him_.

She wasn't happy to be here, facing her brother this way. His eyes were so bright, so beautifully green, and his smile as wide and white as it always had been. It was as if nothing had changed except the location.

But, of course, everything had. It had gone to hell in a hand basket, far too quickly for even Natasha to keep a track of. The only person besides Lucifer who knew what exactly had led up to his fall was the Almighty Himself.

"What did you do to Michael?"

"Does it matter? I have not killed him."

"It was a close-call."

"Let me reiterate: He's not dead, despite the fact _I_ attacked him."

She narrowed her eyes, glaring at him carefully. "You want him alive?"

"Not just him, my dearest of sisters, _all of you_."

"Why?"

"Can't you figure that out for yourself?"

"You want us to watch as you burn down the planet we fought for in the war?" She asked. "A final 'fuck you' to those of us who didn't rebel?" 

eHE He He chuckled, shaking his head. "That's entirely _too_ predictable, sister. Do recall to whom you speak."

"Don't call me that." She snarled, leaning in close to the glass and staring him straight in the eye. He leaned forward, not touching the blessed glass, but near enough to feel the heat it radiated. Heat she could feel him sucking in, as if in the absence of his own grace his essence was trying to compensate.

"Don't call you what? Sister? Why, but it was it not you who wanted me to stay as your brother? Was it not you, Raziel, who _pleaded_ with me? 'Lucifer'," The devil snarled. "'Don't do this. _Please_ '."

Natasha was staring at him, wide-eyed and attentive. Despite her usual stoic nature, and against the fact no one could ever get through the surface of her mask, she cracked. An expression slipped, her eyes watered, a breath caught in her throat.

"Lucifer-" She started, but he cut her off.

"' _Lucifer_ '," he echoed, matching the breathless tone of her voice, mocking her for a love once shown. "'Don't leave us. Don't leave _me'_."

"The past is done!" She shouted, a defence mechanism rarely employed, showing how deeply he cut into her psyche, just by making her recall the words of long ago. Words she had used to try and convince her brother that he was making a mistake, and that they loved him more than anything else. They hadn't wanted to go to war against their clever, brilliant sibling, but they had been forced to when Lucifer pushed their hand.

Like Thor come before her to visit the fallen angel, she smashed her hand against the glass in the face of his ridicule. He had laughed when she had tried to forget; he could see the memories playing across her face like a movie reel.

"You are _pathetic_." He snarled. "I can hear you, as I always have. I can hear everything. Your Father stripped me of all but the ability to _hear_. Prayers, pleas, desperation, of humans and angels alike. You all make me sick, with your neediness, your inability to solve your own problems. Even now you search for him, telling him to make me stop. Why? Why should I when _I_ was the one who was betrayed _?_ " He returned the violent gesture, matching where her fist had landed against the mutant-proof glass, startling her in its unexpectedness. She stared at the way the grace played around Lucifer's hands, not burning as a demon would, simply swirling, before sinking in, staining his palm like golden ink.

He was grinning at her when her eyes returned to his face. "Oh, yes," he smiled. "I had you all fooled, did I not? You think grace is going to stop me? You think this meagre cage can hold me?"

"No." Natasha allowed. "But why are you still here?"

"What a question, Raziel."

"Tell me why you want to be here." She snapped, nerves frayed enough by this bastard wearing her brother's face that she forgot her book of tricks and mind games and went straight into yelling for answers. "In the name of our Father, you will tell me."

"I don't answer to Him anymore, Raziel. And I certainly do not answer to you."

"I looked up to you!" She screamed, smashing the glass again, only to see him smile in delight as she riled herself up. "You are everything to me! You were everything to all of us! You were our brother, Lucifer! You were the best of us! Now look at you! You're a cruel, vain, blood-thirsty demon! You are no better than the hell-spawn that crawl through the cracks, that lower themselves to petty killings in the name of themselves. You're a monster, Lucifer! A plague in angel guise!"

This, it seemed, truly amused Lucifer. His chortles were a brighter, clearer, cleaner sound than had not been heard on Earth for thousands of years. "No, no." He managed through his chiming chuckles. " _You_ brought the plague, sweet one."

And then, like the last piece of a puzzle had been found, the picture became obvious. "Bruce." Natasha stated into the room, and knew the microphones in the cameras had picked up on it too. Her expression was trained once more, her eyes suddenly blank. Lucifer's own face slacked, eyes narrowing, waiting with baited breath. He'd realised his mistake as well. "He's the plan."

"What?"

But Natasha was leaving Lucifer behind, no longer distressed, no longer shaking with anger and pain, no longer haunted by the echoes of yesteryear. Rather, for all Lucifer was to know, she was as composed as she'd ever been; everything else had been a play. A brilliant one, if she did say so herself. Lucifer didn't have to know how much of it had been true. No one did.

"Oh," she recalled, and turned to find her brother in a different stance. He was central now in the cage, staring at her with a defensive position, eyebrows furrowed in confusion and irritation. "Thank you for your cooperation."

She could feel his glare dig into her back, like poison daggers flying at her with deadly precision. She closed the door behind her, hurrying despite her self-control to get away.

\---

"What the hell has this guy got anything to do with it?" Was Fury's first question as they all watched Natasha leave the room. Lucifer was standing frozen in his cage, watching the door she exited out of with a worrying amount of contemplation. However, they hadn't the time to worry about whatever the devil may or may not do to the helicarrier's interior décor whilst they had uncovered such a useful tip.

Fury had gestured to Bruce, who had turned from his patient and taken his glasses off anxiously. He did that when he felt under pressure, fiddled with them as a soothing motion for his hands. That was why he had them in the first place, as angels had no other reason to need spectacles other than to better blend in with the human race.

"You're okay, right?" Clint asked Bruce bluntly. "He can't do anything to you? No mumbo-jumbo demon shit?"

"I can't imagine so." Bruce muttered, looking a little worried about the whole business. That was unsurprising - if it had been Tony whom Luci had weeded out as the reason for humanity's destruction, he would have maintained his right to freak out.

Bruce wasn't permitted to panic now with Steve down for the count, but then he never really had that luxury to begin with. He was, however, allowed to worry at his lip with his teeth and twiddle with the frames of his glasses.

"He can't do anything." Tony tried to encourage, looking to Thor who knew their brother best. "He can't. Not from the cage, right?"

"Not to another angel, no."

"I beg your pardon." Fury snarled, picking up the hidden implications and calling Thor out on it. "What about us humans? We're the ones who should be worrying here."

"He was able to manipulate the way humans evolved from a very different cage." The thunder of God pointed out. "A significantly more secure one. He is most certainly able to manipulate people now."

"Great." Fury spat.

"Luckily, he finds you all repulsive."

"That _should_ actually soothe you a little." Clint nodded. "He doesn't like to go near things which he finds dirty, and you guys are just filth to him. The lowest sort of being."

"Thank you. I'll sleep better knowing that."

"Thor, that was sarcasm." Tony injected, when the angel started to smile. The expression immediately dropped.

"Ah."

"You know, you should be used to that. Luci's a snarky bastard. He always has been."

"Yes. I was the butt of many of his jokes because of it."

Clint laughed about the same time Tony grinned. There had been a particularly good prank which had involved Thor and a dress. Despite himself, even Bruce's lips twitched upwards when the other two angels started to chortle. Meanwhile, Thor sighed.

The memories reminded them all of that pale face, that broad grin and trickster attitude. The title of _Loki_ suited him.

"How about you dipshits all stop grinning like lunatics and start telling me why am I meant to be scared of _him_?" Fury interrupted moodily, pointing again to Bruce, their curly-haired, big-eyed brother who shifted uncomfortably under the human's scrutiny. "It's something more, isn't it? More than just an angel thing."

As if proclaiming his darkest secret to the world, Bruce spoke meekly, embarrassed. "My name is Ezekiel." He admitted it as if that would mean something to Fury. Judging by the aggravated tilt to his eyebrow, it didn't.

"What do you know about angels, Director?" Clint asked, but it was Coulson who answered.

"Ezekiel is the angel of death."

The man in question nodded.

"And transformation." Tony said into the suddenly heavy silence. "Bad things happen when he gets twitchy."

"You don't want to see me angry," Bruce tried in a joking manner, but it fell flat with the defeated tone to his voice. "It won't work." He then said, as strongly as he could. "What can he do from down there?"

"It's not just you," Natasha said as she finally joined them, breathing heavier from her jog up here. "It's all of us. It's not enough that we'll watch the world burn - he wants it to be _us_ who _destroys_ it."

"How's he going to do that?"

Natasha bit her lip, looking to Bruce. "He's a good start."

"Not going to happen." Tony raised his hands, because if Bruce said so then that was that. "He's got it covered. Seriously, I know."

"He keeps on prodding me." Bruce admitted, nodding at the scalpel the Messenger had picked up.

"Stop that." Natasha chided, in place of Steve who still wasn't awake to do it himself. "What's the plan?"

"Plan?" Fury asked, and Natasha shrugged, looking to Clint to back her up, then to Thor.

"My brother will not stay here. Whatever his play is, it is unlikely he factored that cage in, therefore he will be letting himself free when he feels it necessary."

"Wonderful."

"I'll make sure everyone is prepped." Coulson nodded to the angels, sending a lingering look to the unconscious body of Steve, before smartly taking his leave.

"The plan?" Natasha reiterated.

"Make sure he doesn't break out?" Tony suggested, if only to see Bruce smile. He was still too jumpy for anyone's good.

"Nice try, Tony." He said lightly. "But I'm not sure how well that'd work out."

"Yeah. If _He_ couldn't do it, no one else can. Loki's a hard one to trap."

Clint barked out a bitter laugh. "He'll kill you if you actually call him that to his face."

"I will, too." Natasha promised, because there were certain connotations behind the name Loki, some of which fit Lucifer to a T, and others of which pointedly did not. Not anymore. “It’ll only make him angrier.”

"No, you won't. And _precisely_."

"What, because he's not pissed off enough as it is?"

Tony grinned. "If he's angry, he'll make a mistake."

Bruce's laugh was shallow and mocking. "Like the last time?" He questioned. "When his mistake split our family in half?"

If there was anything to sober Tony up, that was it. "Right." He said thickly around a guilty lump in his throat. "Don't rile up the devil. Gotcha."

\--

The plan was this: wait for Lucifer to make his move and act accordingly when he tries to slaughter every human on the planet.

It was a sound plan, and it covered all possible options. Theoretically.

When Loki actually broke out, they were mostly prepared. Not completely, because no one could ever claim to be completely prepared for the demon of devils breaking out of his trap to murder every living soul on board, but as much as they could be.

Natasha, at least, was primed and ready.

Bruce was not.

Bruce had left the minute the helicarrier shook, terrified enough to potentially do something drastic. He wasn't scared of his brother so much as he was scared of himself. Tony wished with all his might that Bruce didn't have to feel uncomfortable in his own body and with his powers, God made them perfect and all that, but there were some things in this universe that a few comforting words could not solve.

Bruce had taken Steve away, scooping him up and flying him somewhere safe. Tony had suggested Rhodey's base, because Rhodey was a good place to start if they were going to begin spreading the word to the humans to get ready. Rhodey would be patient, understanding, and _believing._ He already knew of the existence of angels, so it'd be one less road-block for Bruce to overcome when he was already feeling a little antsy.

Natasha and Clint were backing up SHIELD, and Fury had followed behind them. Tony was working on evacuation of those who couldn't stand a chance to defend themselves. In the angel's opinion, that count should include _everyone_ on the damn ship, but trained agents were apparently stubborn bastards who were happy to greet death like an old friend.

He'd be a familiar face, at least. Bruce wouldn't be happy with them for skipping the chance to live, so he'd be an angry face, but familiar all the same.

Thor had disappeared somewhere. God knows where exactly, but likely it was Lucifer-bound. He was probably going to try something stupid, like reason with him or hug him or smash him with his hammer. Steve had already tried that, and it hadn't precisely worked out, but there was no stopping Thor once he’d set his mind to something.

However, despite how foolish his running off on his own seemed, everything appeared to be working out alright so far. The helicarrier was still floating with no casualties to speak of as of yet, and with no sightings of Lucifer in the flesh.

Of course, right when things started looking up was the precise moment that everything went to shit.

\---

Thor had managed to make it to Lucifer before Lucifer found his way to humanity. In fact, he hadn't even left the cage room.

The door was open to the cage, but Lucifer himself was still inside. He was simply wandering, obviously taking in the mechanics of the ingenious contraption, and without a thought Thor stormed forward to meet him.

It was a mistake.

Behind him, the door slid closed with a _snick_ , and he turned to find Lucifer gone – he'd not been inside at all, but instead at the control panel, ogling it with great curiosity. He looked up when Thor hit his hammer to the glass, but it had no more effect than before.

"That's an age-old trick." Lucifer sneered, laughing at his brother who _always_ fell for his pranks. "One would think you'd have learnt to know me better by now, Ramiel."

He returned to the controls, fingers stroking buttons and switches with intrigue and delicacy, not putting force into his actions, so therefore not setting off any of the mechanisms.

"Humans think us immortal." He spoke without turning back to address the thunder of God, who seethed silently within the cage, waiting with baited breath for every word Lucifer uttered. "Shall we test that?"

Clamps came down upon the cage and the floors below it opened, jerking the chamber and the angel inside of it. Still, Thor said not a word, eyes focusing solely on Lucifer, as if daring his brother to do it. To betray his sibling like this and test the limits of Thor's God-given life. It wasn't as if this was the first time, but it stung like it was when Lucifer's fingers inched forward. If he pressed the button the cage would be released and it would plummet through the ship and towards the planet below with Thor inside of it. Whether they be over land or sea, hitting the ground would not be a pleasant experience.

"Step away, please." A soft but authoritative voice cut through the tense silence, daring to command something of the devil. Both sets of angelic eyes twirled to see Agent Coulson, a human who was clearly insane, pointing a hefty gun in Lucifer's direction. "I don't know what effect this will have on an angel, but considering the stories I've heard, none of you are impervious to physical objects. I imagine a bazooka will at least slow you down."

Lucifer actually caved in face of the threat and the weapon. Slowly, he raised his hands so his palms faced the agent, and took two steps forward, smiling gently at the man. "Ah, the priest. I can sniff out clergy half a planet away. I was wondering when you'd show your face."

"You can smell priests?" Coulson raised an eyebrow, but otherwise his expression was as blank as usual.

"Certainly," The demon's smile grew a molar and a half. "They always reek of," he breathed in the air, closed his eyes for a second, and froze. Thor screamed out when he saw what his brother had done.

The spear Lucifer had been armed with upon arrival was now returned to his hand, and the illusion shattered as soon as the blade had found itself embedded in Coulson's chest. The human choked, body arching as the spear thrust him forward.

"-Blood." Lucifer breathed into Coulson's ear, yanking his weapon out with a wet jerk and letting the body drop to the floor.

Thor was heaving with rage and shock as he watched his brother return to the console. When Lucifer slammed his hand to the button releasing the catches, Thor could not admit to even being surprised. He'd seen his brother do worse in the war, but the years had made him forget the cruelty Lucifer held within him.

Falling through the air was only a minor problem in the face of things, but the warring emotions he felt when he'd landed heavily upon the ground after escaping was what hindered his immediate return. He wasn't sure how he would deal with Lucifer if he confronted him now. Thor didn't know whether he would cry for him or choke the life out of him.

\---

Fury was trying hard to keep control of the situation. For the most part it was working: the people on board his ship in his employ were hardened, military trained agents with enough years under their belts to keep their wits about them and carry on dutifully. The novices, aka the people who would endanger the ship and every soul on board, were being led out by Stark, who seemed keenly desperate for the job. As much as Fury didn't trust him, he could tell that Stark was trying his best.

To say that Fury was unhappy about the situation was putting it lightly. Better elucidated, Fury was livid. Of all the things he'd signed up for, or he was prepared for, or he was willing to deal with, the wrath of Lucifer raining down upon his planet because _daddy doesn't love me_ wasn't one of them. The only reason he hadn't shot the bastard out of the helicarrier in that cage had been because he needed some answers. Now he was beginning to regret it.

The angel Natasha was with him, lingering at the door, poised and waiting for any sign of her demented brother. The other one, Clint, had disappeared somewhere with his bow and arrow primed, but Natasha assured Fury that he wasn't too far away. _He sees better from a distance_ , whatever that meant.

Overall, very little was happening. Unnecessary or hazardous personnel (meaning Bruce, the Angel of _Death_ ) had been successfully removed from the premises and those who were left were more than capable of looking out for themselves. Or, at least, in a normal situation they would be. However, they were all aware they were likely to die, and had apparently come to accept it. You didn't sign up to SHIELD for a comfy desk-job, after all.

"Sir, there is activity in the cell." One agent snapped, sending the security footage to Fury, who watched with no small amount of ire as the big angel of thunder was tricked by his slick, fallen brother.

"God damn it." He hissed, ignoring an angelic glare, until the same agent spoke again.

"Sir, human presence detected." And there was Coulson, calm, outrageous Coulson. The best eye Fury had. He was engaging Lucifer, the damned brave idiot, and was punished for it. A few gasps of agents keeping watch interrupted the moment, but Fury himself made no sound.

Coulson had once been a priest, a long time ago. He'd been good at it, passionate about it, and still occasionally slipped up with his easy Bible references and unerring belief. Fury knew what had driven him from the clergy and into SHIELD's arms, but they did not speak about it. They had no need to, since it only made Coulson a better, stronger person. They had never expected him to become what he did; never foresaw how adept an agent he would be. He had been the best of him, and the devil had cut him down.

Fury watched as Lucifer let his brother drop fifty thousand feet, and fumed as the silence followed. Lucifer stared upon the absence where the cage had once been held, before slowly, carefully, he smiled.

And then the clanging alarms went off as he disappeared completely from the room.

"Where is he?" Fury yelled into the helicarrier, but he needn't have bothered, since they were all immediately staring at a dark-clad figure standing out the great windows of the ship.

Lucifer turned from the view, watching the human crowd who gaped in return. He glanced to his sister who had come to join Fury's side, and she pointed a gun at him. Fury wondered what a gun would even do to an angel, or why she was carrying one at all. It seemed Lucifer felt the same, and cocked his head at her.

She explained, "It's modified. Gabriel got bored."

"Gabriel does that." Lucifer allowed, before raising a hand steadily, and clicking his fingers. Stretching out before him, Fury was graced with the horrified sight of every computer before him blinking out one by one.

"Oh," Lucifer breathed, somehow still heard over the panicking noises of agents trying to restart their systems. "Were they important?"

 _Important?_ Yes, they were fucking _important_. Every computer on the helicarrier held top secret information, or served a particular function to the ship to keep her afloat or aloft in the air, and the bastard had just wiped everything, completely, fully, without heed of the consequences. Of course, when you owned a pair of wings, the consequences of falling out of the sky were not as severe.

Beneath his feet, Fury could feel the engines slow, before dying out completely. The usual comforting hum of the helicarrier was replaced by the terrifying whistle as it started to drop towards the sea.

With a final laugh, Lucifer disappeared, just in time to miss an arrow heading for his eye-socket. From his hidden vantage point Clint swore loudly, but it was drowned out by the sound of humans doing the same.

"Everyone evacuate!" Fury called, but his agents were three steps ahead of him. He looked to the red-haired angel and ordered her to help get people off. Increase the efforts of Stark, hell, fly people away if she had to. Clint must have heard as well, since he was gone in the next instant along with her.

And Fury was left alone, watching as his ship dropped through empty air and everything he'd worked for fell apart.

\--

They weren't sure how many they lost as the helicarrier hurtled out of the sky, and the final count was inconclusive. Hundreds of agents were missing, more than were safe and accounted for, and work was starting to fish out the bodies as they bobbed about the sea surface.

The helicarrier itself was long gone, and Fury was now more serious about this farce than he'd been since it started. Too many of his people were dead, and someone was going to pay for it. Starting, first and foremost, with the devil.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony had been shooed away from the helicarrier by Natasha as soon as she came to relieve him. He argued, because he wasn’t the only one who had felt the silence that had descended upon the floating ship. It was ominous, the sudden stillness, which was quickly followed by the weightlessness of falling from the sky.

“Are the engines out?” He asked the other angel as she came barrelling in, looking to the humans who had yet to escape.

“Find Bruce.”

“Are the engines out?” He repeated, sharper this time, and she rounded on him in reply.

“We don’t know where Lucifer is, but if his game is Bruce then it’s a fair bet that is where he’s going.”

Tony glanced to the people they had yet to evacuate – cramming in as many agents into a jet as they could manage, whilst others waited and tried not to panic.

“We’ve got it covered,” Natasha said, lower this time. “We’re keeping the drop as slow as possible, but there’s only so much Clint and I can do. You have to find Bruce.”

Tony didn’t like her tone, certainly didn’t want to follow the order like a lap dog, but he was an angel, a trained soldier, and he was aware as she was that there were bigger concerns here.

“I can help-“ He tried again, once.

“Do you want Lucifer to find him first?”

No. Father forbid if the devil got his grubby hands on the angel of death. The human race might as well say _goodnight Vienna_.

Tony found Bruce and Steve right where he told them to be – at Rhodey’s military base, locked away behind several reinforced walls and platoons of edgy soldiers. However, if Loki truly wanted to find them, these defence measures, for all that they were top of the range and glinting bright with expensive technology, would not be enough.

Bruce was sitting next to Steve, rubbing his eyes. No humans had discovered them hiding behind locked doors as of yet, but Tony intended to right that.

“I’m not a doctor.” He breathed, wearily, tiredly, referring to why Steve had yet to wake. Bruce was stressed, he was upset, and Tony was just thanking the Father that his brother had been graced with such strength of will to battle through. “I’m not even a healer.”

“Why did he do it?” Tony asked, referring to when Steve hit the devil around the head with his shield. It had been bothering him since the face-down in the hangar. “Loki seemed to be…” Tony wanted to say, _giving up_. Or, _coming round_. Or even, _coming home_. When Steve had hugged him, the man had dropped all fronts, all anger, accepted the embrace greedily. But the words died on his tongue, tasted coppery like blood at the back of his throat. They clawed at his insides, and he couldn’t bring them forward. Lucifer killed millions of people without so much as blinking due to some misplaced notion of vengeance. Lucifer was certainly _not_ ‘coming round’.

“Steve had the humans to think about.” Bruce pointed out. “Even if Lucifer came to some sort of an agreement with us, there are limits to what he would refrain from, unspoken lines drawn in the sand. Humans are one of them. He won’t spare them just because we ask him to. Steve knew that, so, when he saw his chance…” He drifted off, looking to the deathly still body of an angel who was, at least, still breathing shallowly.

Tony completed the sentence. “He took it.” Bruce nodded. “He should have known that Lucifer wouldn’t drop that easy. We’ve fought with him before.”

The angel of death had an answer for that too: “Can’t blame him, really. He did look as if he was about to keel over.”

Tony snorted, because they’d all seen that trick before. He pointedly ignored that it had affected him too. “He never learns.”

“Nor do any of us.”

“Hey, how long has that alarm been on?” Tony pointed to the ceiling, where they could just about make out a faint, continuous drone. In here, sequestered away behind layers upon layers of protective walls, made almost soundproof by sheer density, it was easy to miss. Bruce shrugged, seemingly only just noticing himself. He’d had bigger problems to deal with.

“I’ll go check it out.” Tony offered, leaving before Bruce had time to agree. It was the best idea – if Steve needed any attention Tony wouldn’t know what to do except maybe yell at him until he was alright again. However, he was aware that a proper bedside manner usually involved a little more tact.

He flew outside, appearing amid some panicked soldiers who did not notice him in their flurry. He followed them down winding corridors with flashing warning lights painting the walls red, trailing after shouting voices and the uniform sound of marching and clunking guns.

Eventually, Tony found himself almost exactly where he had started, just on the opposite side of the door. Inside, Bruce and Steve were hiding, recuperating. Outside, mystified, there were a bunch of terrified, jumpy humans trying to break in. And at the head of the group was a familiar face.

“Rhodey!” Tony called over the heads, and the soldiers immediately whirled around, weapons pointed and armed, whilst the angel grinned through them to his suddenly exasperated human friend.

“Is this you, you bastard?”

“Are you allowed to swear at me? Isn’t that like blasphemy or something? Anyway, I’m not a bastard, I don’t even _have_ a mother.”

“Answer the damn question, Ed.”

“It’s Tony now.” He smiled, dodging through the crowd to confront the colonel directly. “And, technically, yes, it’s me. I’d advise you _not_ go in there. Bruce and Steve are having a little timeout time, you know?”

No, Rhodey did not know. Rhodey perhaps remembered Bruce – the angel who appeared out of nowhere only to whisk his friend away – but Steve was a mystery. Further, he wouldn’t understand _why_ Bruce sorely needed a bit of space, and it infuriated the man, so usually on top of everything, to be out of the loop.

“So, what, I’m expected to just let two strangers who I assume have crazy powers like you to chill out in my base, drink beer and have a gay ol’ time? Is that what you’re telling me, Ed?”

“ _Tony_ , and yes. I did say that. They’re good people. They’re my brothers.” He paused. “Not that relations to me _necessitates_ goodness,” He was speaking of one of his siblings in particular which he’d rather not get into right now. “But it’s a decent starting point.”

“You’re asking me to trust you? You blow into my camp after god knows how many years and you just want us to fall back into the same routines?”

Tony nodded, still smiling. “Yeah.”

Rhodey looked at him carefully for a long time, assessing him, and Tony tried not to squirm under it. Really, he’d been under far too much scrutiny today. You’d think he’d get used to it after several thousand years of awe, but he’d spent too much time in Heaven recently where most of his brothers thought he was an arrogant dickhead. Which, in fairness, he usually was. The most attention he’d received before coming to Earth had been an occasional stern word from Michael. Multiple and serious considerations of his moral character all at once put him ill at ease.

Finally Rhodey nodded, sighing while he was at it, dismissing the soldiers who were eying the spectacle unravelling before them with peaked interest. He called a stop to the alarm through his comm, instructing the men to report back to their stations. When the hall had cleared, Rhodey beckoned for Tony to follow him, heading in the direction of the ready room. Rhodey was smart – quicker than most people Tony had come across, up in Heaven and on Earth alike – but he was also notoriously impatient. He didn’t, therefore, bother to wait until they had sat down when he started shooting off questions.

“It must be serious for you to be down here,” he pointed out immediately. “I thought there was something happening upstairs.”

“It was a false alarm, but we were on high alert for a while. Then we started to relax and, well, _this_ happened…” He drifted off, wondering how much Rhodey could handle knowing all in a single sitting. However, the human proved himself to be miles ahead of what Tony expect of him, as always.

He barked, “If this is to do with what happened in Africa, you will sit down and explain that shit to me right now.”

Tony immediately protested. “This feels like an interrogation. You’re looking at me with interrogation eyes.” He raised up his hands defensively. “I want a lawyer.”

“Angels don’t get lawyers. Not when they have answers to big-ass fucking questions.”

“I want Pepper.”  Tony amended, which at least made Rhodey’s evil eyes ebb somewhat.

“You’ll tell us then?” He asked, and suddenly his voice was more careful, softer. Like he’d just remembered that Tony was actually his friend. Reluctantly, Tony shrugged. He felt like he’d been forced to say yes, but truthfully, what else could he have done?

“Pepper first. I’m not running through this twice.”

Rhodey called in the order, instructing a car to pick up Miss Potts on the double, before the man turned to the angel again. Tony, in the meantime, was scouring around for alcohol, before realising there was none to discover. He flicked his hand and a whiskey materialised in his palm. He swallowed it in one gulp.

“Are you okay?” The Lieutenant Colonel asked, and Tony shook his head without thinking about it. Rhodey put a hand on his shoulder and led Tony to sit down.

“Right, first things first,” he said, brushing off Tony’s look when it was sent his way. “It’s about whoever is in my bunker.”

“Bruce and Steve. They’re buddies of mine.”

“Buddies like me and Pepper, or buddies like _buddies_.”

“Buddies.” Tony nodded. “Buddies like my brothers.”

“You said that.” Rhodey reminded him. “So, angels?” He still said the word with a certain tone, like he wasn’t quite capable of believing it. It cheered Tony’s miserable spirits to hear it, as scepticism always did. He liked to see people who thought for themselves.

“Angels.” He confirmed, refilling his glass with an absent thought. Rhodey hated it when he did that, since it didn’t comply with universal laws. You can’t just make something from nothing. Well, that was true enough, and Tony did not, but he wasn’t about to spill all of his angelic secrets to appease to the human’s scientific mind.

“What are they doing here?”

“We needed a safe-house. Not that this is safe at all.” Tony shrugged, but it was better than nothing. A wall wouldn’t stop Lucifer, but it made Tony feel better at least.

“What would an angel need to feel safe from?”

Tony tutted, shaking his head. “You are going to need a drink when we get around to that. Also a chair. Anyway, long story short, Steve is hurt and needs to lie low for a little while.”

“At an army base?”

“You’re going to be called out either way. Might as well cut out the middle man. Less civilian casualties.”

“That’s heartening.” Rhodey said, sounding the opposite of heartened. “So, how big are we talking?”

“What do you mean?” Tony knew precisely what the soldier meant, but was hesitant to show how terrified he was.

“It’s gotta be worrying if you’re here. Last time you were stuck down here because you accidentally tore the wing off a plane. Now you’re here for some other reason, and you want the army, or at least me, in the know. Now, tell me again why I shouldn’t be concerned?”

Tony put his hands up, defending himself. “I never said you shouldn’t be concerned. That said, you probably _should_ sit down.”

“I’m not a frail-hearted OAP, Ed. Tony. Whatever.” He glared. “I can take it like a big boy. I heat up my own milk and everything.”

Tony smiled into his glass, but shook his head. “I’m not repeating this, and Pepper needs to know.”

“Why?” Rhodey asked, and he had a valid point. Rhodey needed to know because he was the army, but Pepper… she was at the top of a powerful organisation, yes, but they were a company of scientists. The most they would do is scoff at Tony’s assertions, or potentially have an existential crisis. A few would accept it, but it would take time that they didn’t have.

But Tony needed to tell Pepper. He needed to warn her. To be honest, he wanted her off the planet completely. Not that he could do anything about it – there was few other places to go, and nowhere was safe – but he felt like he could do anything, bend the fabric of the universe itself, if it meant Pepper was okay. Rhodey could look after himself, tough man with guns and armies at his back, but Pepper was vulnerable.

He didn’t say this, however, when he finally answered Rhodey’s question. Instead, he replied: “Because she’ll kill me if I don’t.” The colonel thought for a moment, and agreed. No one wanted to see Pepper when she was angry.

When the woman did finally arrive, Happy at her side with a vexed look about him, the protective old geezer, she almost punched Tony in the face. Instead, she managed to compose herself before unleashing her fury, and denied a drink when Tony offered. Happy accepted, smelling it with approval, and Rhodey was holding his own glass on the angel’s advice. He had yet to take a sip, but it was a precaution for when Tony dropped his bombshell.

He didn’t have the wait long for the appropriate time. Pepper blew the conversation wide open, first word not being the socially appropriate: _how are you_ , or _it’s nice to see you again_ , but rather: “Why are you here?” It was obvious she wanted to say more, but an ingrained level-headedness had her restraining herself, keeping her emotions inside.

“He wouldn’t tell me until you arrived.” Rhodey grouched, whilst Tony gestured to the seat next to him. Unlike Rhodes, who had stubbornly elected to stay on his feet, Pepper allowed him to press her into the chair.

“You sure about that drink?” He asked, but she glared at him. Already, she could tell something was amiss and she had only been in the room for two minutes.

“Just tell me.” She ordered, pulling him down from where he was pacing to and fro, tapping his fingers, shuffling his feet. He was agitated, and that was making the humans in the room feel the same way. Not that Tony blamed them – if an angel was worried then a human should be running for safety on another continent.

“Lucifer.” He finally blurted out, and the mortals glanced between each other. Happy frowned, Rhodey seemed to be biting down on something – probably his own rationality – whereas Pepper remained calm. This wasn’t how Tony had expected them to act. Even if they didn’t know the context, the mere word was terrifying. They should at least have freaked out a little bit. “Lucifer has risen.” He stressed, just to make sure they understood him.

“Okay.” Pepper said, keeping her hand on his wrist to ensure he wouldn’t bolt up and resume his frantic paces. “And?”

“And?” He echoed dumbly. “What do you mean ‘and’?”

Pepper blinked at him patiently. “And what are you doing about it?”

Tony felt like his racing heart was making up for the lack of fear within these people. Clearly they didn’t understand the gravity of this situation. Damn atheists. At least with the god-fearing, Tony didn’t have to sit down and _explain_ why the devil was bad news.

“Hello, are you hearing me?” He asked them all, clicking in front of Pepper’s pretty face. He looked to Rhodey, mystified, then to Happy. All three of them were waiting for him to answer Pepper’s question. “We’re doing what we can.” He finally said, but he wanted them to realise this was not the main priority here. “We’ve alerted appropriate authorities, and I guess this counts as me alerting the army, and we’re trying to figure out his plan-“

“And?” Pepper pressed, but Tony could only shake his head.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m just trying to warn you. People have _died_ , and they will continue to die, and I have no idea how we’re going to stop him.”

“One angel against you and your brothers? You can take him, can’t you?” Happy asked optimistically, and Tony felt the panic well up inside him, because there was no way he could, no matter how many angels he dragged down from heaven to join the noble cause.

“We had a pretty good team,” he admitted, but even then that had not been enough. “Hear the subtle tenses? _Had_. We’re looking kinda pathetic right about now, since we’re scattered to the four corners.”

“So get yourselves back together again.” Rhodey snapped. Tony tutted, laughed insincerely.

“Easier said than done. Look, I just wanted to make sure you all know that things are going to get really bad, really soon, and I don’t want you near it.”

“So, you’re trying to scare us away? I thought you were here to prepare us.”

“I thought you’d all take this a lot worse.” Tony admitted, looking to each of them suspiciously. “Seriously, why are you not freaking out?”

“Two countries have been wiped off the map, Tony,” Rhodey reminded him, and Pepper and Happy had obviously been kept in the loop. After all, if Pepper Potts demanded to know something, it took a lot more guts than James Rhodes possessed to say _no_. “At this point, I’m _glad_ we’ve got an explanation. If it’s someone, or something, like an angel or, hell, even the devil, at least we can try to work against it.”

“Don’t say ‘we’,” Tony glared. “ _You_ are only getting told because it’s safer that you’re informed, and because you’re housing three angels under your roof at the moment. Other than that, there is no ‘we’.”

“You know, I think it’s really funny that you believe we’re going to let you go alone on this. I wouldn’t trust you with a mission of this magnitude, no matter who or what you claim to be, Ed.”

“I’m an archangel. I’m _the_ archangel Gabriel.” Tony felt the need to remind them, because it seemed they’d forgotten. “Do you know what that means? It means I was on the front lines of the celestial war against Lucifer. Against my own _brothers_ -“

“Which also means that you are emotionally invested in the opposing team, which in turn results in you needing outsiders to rein you in. In all honesty, if it wasn’t for the fact we’ll be needing as many angels as we can get on our side, I’d want you to sit it out completely.”

Pepper and Happy were nodding seriously, agreeing with Rhodey’s outburst.

“He’s right, Ed- Tony.” Happy said.

Pepper continued, “If you’re not careful, and if you don’t use your resources correctly, or if you just plain ignore them, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“And so are you,” Tony tried, gesturing expressively at the woman, then to the other two. None of them were showing what Tony considered to be the right amount of fear. Didn’t the word _devil_ mean anything to them? “You want me to stay safe, but you guys are tiny little blips of humanity. You’re all so fragile. _Steve_ could crush you with a thought even now, and he’s half-dead. And you think you can go up against the epitome of evil in this universe and come out of it okay at the end? Lucifer is _triple_ the strength of me on a good day, and that’s being generous.” _Tony_ had little hope that he’d last five minutes. A human would be slaughtered in a heartbeat.

Rhodey’s face was determined, as if he disagreed. Tony couldn’t figure out whether the man either did not understand the gravity of their situation or whether he honestly believed humanity could survive. He said, “We’ve been through worse.”

Tony scoffed. “Don’t let Lucy here you say that. He’ll take it as a dare.”

“Then let him.” And this time it _was_ a challenge. “Fuck him if he thinks he can come down to my planet and shoot at us like fish in a barrel.”

“Are you joking?” Tony asked them all, but not a single face showed a glimmer of humour. Bewildered, he said, “You’re not.”

“No, we’re not,” Pepper confirmed, her hand still tight around Tony’s wrist, her grip both a comfort and a warning. Even though he had the power within him to leave abruptly, or to force his will upon them, to whisk them away as he saw fit, he wouldn’t. Because free will was the greatest of his Father’s creations, and Pepper would also find a way to hunt him down if he did.

“We need to alert the army,” Rhodey said. “More than just me, Tony, I don’t count.”

“What will you say to them?” Happy asked the Lieutenant Colonel. It was a fair point. No one would believe them if they charged in uninvited rattling off religious doomsday paranoia.

Rhodey waved an arm. “I’ll think of something.”

“What happened?” Pepper asked Tony, sensibly asking the questions no one else had as of yet dared to linger on. “How did Lucifer ‘rise’?”

“I don’t know. I mean, he was supposed to be locked up, but he broke free of his cage. We don’t know how, that cage was supposed to be impenetrable, ergo unbreakable, but obviously we were wrong.”

Happy wondered, “Why does he want to kill us?”

Tony realised this had already been asked by Nick Fury once too many times. “Are you kidding me, people? Have none of you read the bible?”

“This is serious, Tony,” Pepper glared. “We’re trying to understand, but you’re not helping.”

“ _I’m_ not helping? What am I supposed to be helping you with? Your plan to take on _Lucifer_?”

“You gathered us here.” Pepper pointed out. “What did you want us to say?”

Tony groaned. “I only wanted to tell you to watch your back. Are all humans like you?”

“Willing to defend our homes?”

“Suicidal.” Tony corrected.

Rhodey said, “So you want us to sit by and watch as you try to stop him from wiping out another country on your own? Because that seems to have worked so far.”

Tony put his head in his hands, closed his eyes and tried to block out the glares of his human companions. He couldn’t face them, not when they meant so much to him and they were going out of their way to die.

“Tony?” Pepper asked, her hand heavy on his back, and he looked up suddenly, feeling a shift in the air. “What is it?”

“Someone’s here.” A presence; angelic and impossibly powerful.

Considering their previous topic of conversation, it was no surprise that everyone tensed. Tony shot up from his seat, the sensation of weakness crawling up his back, despite the fact he was the strongest. He was one of the greatest angels, even with a faulty wing, what with his intelligence backing up the strength of an archangel. That said, he was still no Lucifer. And though that was a hard pill to swallow, to save his friends he wasn’t allowed to put them at unnecessary risk by lying to himself.

He flinched when the room filled with white, holy light. Even as it cleared, Tony had to blink to clear the spots in his vision. Then he saw who it was.

“Damn it, Clint!”

“Ha!” The angel guffawed. “You should have seen your faces! You look like the devil had come knocking. Oh, wait, I guess he could’ve.” Clint didn’t look repentant in the least.

“You’re going to hell,” Tony returned.

“Who are these guys?” Rhodey asked, huffy at his base being broken into by complete strangers, angels or no. Tony saw Natasha standing by Happy, lurking in the background, whilst Clint jealously eyed the amber alcohol still in Rhodey’s grasp.

“This asshole is Clint, and that’s Natasha. They’re part of the anti-Loki defence team.”

“We’re not calling him Loki,” Clint snapped, whilst Natasha glared. “And who are the humans?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes,” Rhodey introduced, hand outstretched politely. Clint grasped it, whilst Natasha stared at each individual mortal, assessing and mistrustful.

“They’re clean,” she reported after a moment. Like Tony didn’t already know. “Better safe than at the mercy of Lucifer,” she then defended pointedly. “You don’t know who is under his influence. Be more careful.”

“We’re not under Lucifer’s control,” Happy glared, but cowered when Natasha sent the look right back at him.

“How would you know?”

“She has a point,” Tony said, smiling at the sudden flash of unexpected support. “You don’t have to be dead to be defeated. Loki can do a lot more to you than kill you.”

“Loki?” Pepper asked, whilst Natasha punched his shoulder.

“Stop that.”

“Lucifer has this whole rivalry thing with Thor, and I think he should roll with it. Get with the times. Not that Thor’s ‘with the times’, but you know what, even ‘Loki’ has better connotation than ‘Lucifer’.” Tony scoffed. “Speaking of, where is the blond lug?”

Clint shrugged. “Beats me. He’s as hard to find as Luci. You don’t think-“

“That he died? No.” Because no matter what Lucifer had done to him, Thor was too strong for that, and there was no way Tony could deal with it if it were true.

“Well, he hasn’t shown his face yet. It’s possible-“

“No, it’s not.” The archangel said sharply, making Clint shut his trap. Finally, the archer recognised Tony’s terror, his pig-headed ignorance and blind faith in their brother, and nodded.

“What about Steve? How’s he doing?”

“Bruce hasn’t said anything.” And Tony was taking that as good sign. No news was better than bad news. It was an attitude which he was extending to Lucifer’s sudden disappearance and suspicious radio silence.

“So, what are the humans for?” Clint asked, raising an eyebrow at Rhodey’s smart uniform. “Looking pretty?” This time he was looking at Pepper. Both she and Tony rolled their eyes simultaneously.

“Yes,” The Messenger said at the same time Natasha informed angel, “He wanted to say goodbye.”

“Hey-“ Tony interrupted, but Pepper was quicker.

“What?”

Rhodey grabbed his shoulder to stop him from bolting (really, they knew him too well for mortal blips in time), but Pepper’s very tone kept him still. He knew they were due a very serious talk in the near future, though now was not the time for it. Nevertheless, Tony knew that if he mis-stepped here, it may not be him who would turn their back and not return.

“I told you, it’s dangerous,” he sighed more than spoke, rubbing a hand over his brow. “You don’t know Lucifer. He can kill any of us, except, possibly, Thor. He’s the reason why Steve is potentially dying in Rhodey’s backroom. I just-“ Tony didn’t know how to phrase it, looking between each of his human friends, who shone so brightly in an ever flickering world. He just wanted to see them one last time, just in case… Just in case…

Just in case nothing. Looking at them now, Tony was filled with determination, with resolve. Because if he failed, then these people were dead. He’d never lay eyes on them again. Never argue with them, laugh with them, exasperate them. He’d never race with Happy, never share drinks with Pepper, never spar with Rhodey. Little things, but they were important to him. They were happy memories, and there was no way his damned demented brother was taking this away from him.

Thor wasn’t dead, Steve would get better, and they would fight. Whatever that meant in the end, Lucifer caged up or worse, they would fight. And Tony would live to see his friends survive.

He smiled suddenly, grinning towards his brother and sister, both of whom flinched at his quick shift in temper. He then looked to the humans, who frowned at him suspiciously.

“What?” Pepper asked.

“Yes, I wanted to say goodbye,” he admitted, but felt too light to be tactful about his change of heart. “But it’s not necessary now. Because we’re going to win.”

“I thought you said your team was scattered, and that Lucifer was more than you can handle.”

Tony tutted. “That sounds like defeatist talk, Rhodey. I thought you wanted to help stop the devil.”

Rhodey nodded. “I’d like to have a chance to swing my fist at the bastard who murdered twenty million people.”

“Yeah, no, not happening.” Tony had to cross the line somewhere, and having Lucifer in a twenty mile radius of his friends was it, but if his friends were determined to put themselves in harm’s way, then the best thing to do was monitor them. “Do we have a plan, Nat?”

“Hey, what if I’m the man with the plan?” Clint protested.

“ _Do_ you have a plan, Clint?”

“Not the point.”

“Yes.” Natasha said, freezing everyone in place.

“Really?” Happy said, surprised. Tony smirked at Clint, who rolled his eyes.

“It’s only because she’s the secret keeper. If I knew what she knew, I’d have come up with something too.”

“What _do_ you know?” Rhodey asked, and it was a pertinent query. The red-haired angel met his eyes, unwavering and stern, and shook her head.

“Secret _keeper_ ,” Clint said again. The emphasis was important, but useless considering their situation.

Rhodey returned, snappishly. “Well, what can you tell us?”

She replied, “We need him secure.”

“He was in a cage in the helicarrier,” Tony pointed out, but she shook her head. She didn’t have to elaborate for Tony to recognise that the mutant cage that Fury had installed in his floating marvel of ridiculous technology (Tony had several pointers for improvements and modifications in what would inevitably be the helicarrier point two, but he would bite down on his tongue until the world wasn’t teetering on the brink of annihilation) had never been enough to keep the devil trapped.

“I didn’t want to risk our hand.” Natasha informed them. “He was only playing at prisoner. It would have been too dangerous to reveal what we know when he could have and _did_ break free at any time. What we need is him locked down, completely unable to move.”

“Can we even do that?” Clint asked, no doubt remembering not only the incident with SHIELD, but also the war where all hope seemed lost, or even times before that, when all their brothers were united, but Lucifer was still the strongest, still the cleverest, perfect, something that every single one of them aspired to be. He was untouchable, unreachable, and putting him in a cage had seemed to be the most apt thing to do. There, in the depth of hell where no goodness, purity or light would ever reach him again, he remained an impossibility. This time, they no longer desired to touch him, and certainly not to be him.

Last time, their Father, all-powerful, all-wise, punished him and all his supporters. This time, so far, it seemed it was up to them.

Natasha, addressing Clint’s question, replied, “Yes, of course,” but to Tony it sounded less than certain. She merely didn’t want to show how uncertain they were in front of the frail, breakable mortals.

“Of course,” Tony parroted, smiling again gladly, hiding his own terror behind a cocky mask. “We can do this. Nat has a plan which she’s telling no one, Bruce is tending to Steve, Thor’ll show up when he’s finished nursing his hyrt pride, and we have three native Californians who are willing to show us around this fine state. Maybe we can set up a trap.”

“I’m from New York,” Pepper corrected.

“Why, do you think that’d be better? I bet it’s nice this time of year.”

“Can we know this plan?”Clint cut across them. “If ‘Tasha doesn’t want to tell us the whole plan, can we at least know the trap bit?”

“Will it work for definite?” Rhodey asked, because he had people to alert and some crazy lies to think up quickly. “Because I don’t want any more civilian casualties.”

“No casualties at _all_ ,” Pepper snarled, pointing her finger at Tony. “No goodbyes, no heroic acts, no sacrifices for the greater good. Do you hear me, angel?”

“Yes, Miss Potts,” Tony said, grasping her hand as she came to straighten his rumpled lapel. “Only if you promise to keep as far away as you can get. We’re going to lure him, which means I want you on the other side of the world. You too, Happy.” He would have included Rhodey in the count, had the man not looked about ready to swing his fist.

“Alright,” Pepper agreed, sighing heavily. It was for the best, and Tony wasn’t the only one with self-preservation on their mind. “Just don’t die.”

“Cross my heart,” he winked, before turning back to Natasha, who was conversing lowly with Clint. “Care to share with the class, California Mountain Snake?”

The angels looked up, the archer smirking whilst Natasha frowned, before slowly nodding her head.

“We have a plan.” They said, with such confidence that whatever worries were still niggling at the edges of Tony’s brain were instantly wiped clean. He felt lighter, brighter, and more positive than he had since he’d finally broken free of that dusty, suffocating cave all those years ago.

He said, “Then let’s go catch the devil!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there's any errors! This chapter took me the best part of a year, and I'm still not 100% with it. Ah, well. It's done now.


End file.
